Impact of Competitive Conditions on Amplitudes of Event-Related Potentials during Verbal Creative and Noncreative Task Performance

Brain activity changes significantly under various conditionsof social interaction. However, the impact of the context of socialinteractions on neurophysiological correlates of cognitive and creativeactivity per se has not been sufficiently addressed. Two polar typesof interactions can be distinguished when solving tasks, cooperationor competition. This study was aimed to assess the impact of competitiveconditions on the amplitudes of event-related potentials (ERPs)when solving creative and noncreative tasks. The subjects (26 males,18 females) performed two types of tasks as individuals or dyads(male-male, female-female): a creative task to think up an unusual usesof simple everyday objects, and a noncreative task to enumerateobjects from the presented categories. In each of the tasks, ERPswere compared during its competitive (dyadic) and individual performance.Competitive conditions led to a decrease in amplitudes of the components P1and P2, as well as N400 and P600, during both creative and noncreativetasks, suggesting the difficulty of finding an answer. The percentageof answers found was also significantly lower under conditions ofcompetitive versus individual task performance. Apparently, cognitiveresources, when performing a task under social interaction conditions,are directed toward the assessment of partner's responses and answers,as manifested in a decreased amplitude both of the earlier attention-relatedERP components (P1, P2) and the later components related to semantic processing(N400, P600).