Cerebral hemispheric mechanisms linking ambiguous word meaning retrieval and creativity

The deferral of ambiguity resolution has been thought to be an important co mponent of creativity. The time course of priming of dominant and subordina te meanings of ambiguous words was investigated using a divided visual fiel d priming paradigm with subjects that varied on a measure of creativity. Th e Wallach-Kogan similarities subtest was used to group 72 subjects into thr ee levels of verbal creativity to compare their performance on the ambiguit y resolution task (Burgess & Simpson, 1988a). Results suggest that both the left and right hemispheres contribute to the maintenance of multiple word meanings in highly creative subjects, while less creative subjects show sus tained subordinate priming only in the right hemisphere or no sustained sub ordinate priming. These results support an interactive, collaborative theor y of verbal creativity (Bogen & Bogen, 1969) and suggest that there are imp ortant individual differences that expand on the basic time course model of hemispheric processing (Burgess & Simpson, 1988a). (C) 1999 Academic Press .