Diminished inhibitory control in cognitive functioning renders people vulnerable to the effects of distracting information. Older adults' decreased ability to ignore information makes them especially susceptible to the disruptive effects of distraction. We show that in the domain of creativity, distraction can have beneficial consequences. In the first study, both younger and older adults generated more creative recipes when presented with distracting information that was congruent with target information, compared to no distracting information, in a subsequent creativity task. This increase in creativity with congruent distraction was preserved, and even slightly enhanced, among older relative to younger adults. In the second study, we sought to replicate and extend our findings to a new task. We found that following exposure to distracting information, older adults generated more creative solutions than younger adults on a subsequent unusual uses for a brick task. Present findings suggest ways that distraction can boost creativity among older adults. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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创造力和衰老：分心的积极后果。

认知功能中抑制性控制的减弱使人们容易受到分散信息影响的影响。老年人忽略信息的能力下降，使他们特别容易受到干扰的破坏。我们证明，在创造力领域，分心可能会带来有益的后果。在第一个研究中，相比于没有分散注意力的信息，在随后的创造力任务中，年轻人和老年人在呈现与目标信息一致的分散信息时都产生了更多的创造性食谱。相对于年轻人来说，在注意力分散的情况下，这种创造力的增加得以保留，甚至略有增强。在第二项研究中，我们试图复制我们的发现并将其扩展到一项新任务。我们发现，在暴露于分散注意力的信息之后，在随后的不便用途上，老年人比年轻人产生了更多的创造性解决方案。目前的发现表明，分散注意力的方法可以提高老年人的创造力。（PsycInfo数据库记录（c）2020 APA，保留所有权利）。