THE IMPACT OF COMPETITIVE CONDITIONS ON AMPLITUDES OF EVENT-RELATED POTENTIALS DURING VERBAL CREATIVE AND NON-CREATIVE TASK PERFORMANCE

Abstract

Brain activity changes significantly under various social interaction conditions. However, the impact of the context of social interactions on neurophysiological correlates of cognitive and creative activity per se has not been sufficiently addressed. Two polar types of interactions can be distinguished when solving tasks, cooperation or competition. This study was aimed to assess the impact of competitive conditions on amplitudes of event-related potentials (ERPs) when solving creative and non-creative tasks. The subjects (26 male, 18 female) performed two types of tasks as individuals and dyads (male–male, female–female): a creative task to think up an unusual use of an ordinary item and a non-creative task to enumerate items from the proposed categories. In each of the tasks, ERPs were compared during its competitive and individual performance. Competitive conditions led to a decrease in amplitudes of the components P1 and P2, as well as N400 and P600, during both creative and non-creative activity, suggesting the difficulty of finding an answer. The percentage of answers found was also significantly lower under conditions of competitive versus individual task performance. Apparently, a significant portion of resources when performing a task under social interaction conditions is directed toward the assessment of partner’s responses and answers, as manifested in a decrease in the amplitude both of the earlier attention-related ERP components (P1, P2) and the later components related to semantic stimulus processing (N400, P600).