Creative people tend to have leaky attention
The suggestion that creative people tend to have leaky attention, caught my attention in this article, written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Amy Ellis Nutt, for The Washington Post.
Allis Nutt writes:
Now scientists at Northwestern have announced they've found the first physiological evidence of a connection between creative thinking and sensory distractions, or what they call "leaky attention."
In sound tests given to 97 subjects, the researchers found that poor sensory gating, the ability to filter unnecessary stimuli from the brain, correlated with a higher number of lifetime creative achievements.
Leaky attention "may help people integrate ideas that are outside the focus of attention into their current information processing, leading to creative thinking," the authors wrote in a study published in Neuropsychologia in January. (referring to year 2015, My comment)
I strongly believe I got interested as I am an easily disturbed person, especially for sounds, end especially when I´m painting something in a phase that calls for creative thinking.
And now I better understand why I work so well in a moderately noisy environment, such as a café or a hotel lobby.
