Creative thinking: immersive, interactive, and multisensory experiences

Virtual reality is a technology widely employed in cognitive science, aimed at studying human behavior and cognition. In recent years, virtual environments have been applied to investigate human creative process, focusing on divergent thinking. Along this line of research, our study addresses the immersive, interactive, and multisensory aspects of virtual reality technologies to enhance individuals’ creative thinking. We tested a sample of N = 60 participants, using positive (N = 20), negative (N = 20), and neutral (N = 20) auditory stimulation within an interactive virtual environment, in order to test possible change in divergent and associative thinking. Our findings provide a first piece of evidence that immersive, interactive, and multisensory experiences enhance human creative thinking, particularly using positive auditory stimulations.