Psychologists who study creative accomplishments throughout the life cycle generally find that creativity peaks between the ages of mid to late 30s or early 40s.They tend to view creativity from the perspective of creative and innovative disciplines, rather than individual accomplishment. And they find little variation across different professions and disciplines of creativity and innovation, such as the arts and sciences.
At What Age Does Creativity Peak? A new study shows that it counts on whether you are a conceptual or an experimental thinker.
But according to two economics professors at Ohio State University, that’s only part of the story. Their research, which looked at 31 Nobel Prize Winners in the field of economics and when they made their most significant contributions to the field, uncovered evidence of two peak cycles of individual creativity in the sciences, one that surfaces very early in some people’s careers, and another that, for others, rises up later in their lives. The difference between those who experience a peak in creativity during their mid twenties and those who are more likely to peak in their mid 50s, the researchers say, is in the type of creativity involved.
People who are conceptual innovators — those who think out of the box and challenge conventional wisdom — tend to come up with new ideas and innovations automatically and peak at an earlier age. Those creators who are more experimental — who build on their knowledge and accepted theories throughout their careers and ultimately find new and innovative ways to analyze that knowledge — tend to peak later in life.
Past research has shown that conceptual artists — poets, painters and novelists — who have clear and more immediate goals for their work, such as to communicate very specific and timely ideas or emotions, work in a different time frame than experimental artists, whose goals are less clear and less precise and who work through trial and error at a more gradual pace. Examples of conceptual innovators include Pablo Picasso, T.S. Eliot, Herman Melville, and Albert Einstein, all of whom contributed their most innovative work while they were young. Examples of experimental innovators include Paul Cezanne, Robert Frost, Virginia Woolf, and Charles Darwin.
The researchers believe that their findings on this view of creativity — that your most creative period is more a product of the type of creator you are and the nature of your work than of the particular field you are in — extend to other academic and scholarly disciplines as well. If you are a conceptual thinker, you are likely to be more creative when you are younger; if you are an experimental thinker, you are likely to do your most creative work when you are older, perhaps even past middle age. In theory, then, there are no limitations to creativity. You could end up doing your best work in your forties, fifties, sixties or even later.
1. What can affect the age of Creativity Peak?| A．Different professions. |
| B．Different disciplines. |
| C．The type of research. |
| D．The type of thinker. |
| A．challenge conventional wisdom |
| B．have immediate goals for their work |
| C．share specific and timely ideas |
| D．work through trial and error gradually |
| A．An experimental thinker may be more innovative. |
| B．Creativity without limitations may peak at any age. |
| C．A scientist is more likely to do creative work than an artist. |
| D．The person who has less precise goals can do more creative work. |
| A．reveal when the accomplishment peaks |
| B．analyze how to be more creative |
| C．explain the factors that influence creativity peaks |
| D．present the importance and limitations to creativity |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】How Arts Contribute to Our Economy
When it comes to arts, most people tend to imagine the end product, beautiful paintings, wonderful pieces of music, or award-winning performances in the theater. But arts groups bring broader value to communities.
The arts create jobs that help develop the economy. Any given performance takes a tour bus full of artists, technical experts, managers, musicians, or writers to create an appealing piece of art.
Definitely, arts are efficient economic drivers when supported. It’s wrong to have prejudice against majors in art and assume arts groups cannot make a profit. But to stay in business, arts groups must produce returns.
| A．Here are some tips on how to achieve profits in the arts. |
| B．Here are some ways in which the arts benefit our economy. |
| C．A successful arts neighborhood creates a chain effect throughout a community. |
| D．These people earn a living income for their professional knowledge and skills. |
| E．No doubt the theater has contributed to the area’s development and economic growth. |
| F．To be major in the arts, you need to have an understanding of the brilliant potential of your choice. |
| G．If you are a student considering taking up the arts, chances are you have been ill-advised to have a plan B. |
【推荐2】When you were at school, were you ever told to stop daydreaming and concentrate? It was easy for your mind to wander if you weren’t interested in what you were learning or if you had better things to think about. Staying focused can still be a challenge in adult life, but understanding how to do it, and knowing what is distracting you, can help.
Scientists have looked at what makes us delay and found a number of ways to help us stay in the zone. One of the most obvious things is eliminating noise. Research by Science Focus magazine found silence is the best for concentration, or a gentle background hum and coffee shop noise is great! It also found turning off notifications on your phone, or switching it off altogether, removes a major distraction and helps us focus on the task at hand.
Another possible cure for a short attention span is brain training. Psychologists and neuroscientists are increasingly interested in our ability to settle down and have looked at what we can change inside our head to make us concentrate. An article for BBC Future by Caroline Williams says that “Attention Researcher Nilli Lavie of University College London has found that making a task more visually demanding takes up more processing power and leaves the brain nothing left to process distractions.” So, keeping your mind busy might be the answer.
There are more practical tips to keeping your mind focused. These include making a list or timetable of the tasks you have to do, finding a workspace where you’re not tempted to do other things, or chewing some gum! It’s possible the movement in your mouth occupies parts of the brain that might otherwise get distracted.
But according to Science Focus magazine, distraction isn’t all bad. “If we were always so focused that we never go distracted, we’d miss potential changes, such as threats, in our environment. Distraction is vital for survival.”
1. Which of the following is similar to the underlined phrase in paragrapb 2?| A．Concerned. | B．Enthusiastic. | C．Calm. | D．Absorbed. |
| A．To introduce a mental recovery. |
| B．To explain the cause of distraction. |
| C．To recommend a kind of intelligence training. |
| D．To suggest a way to train the brain to concentrate. |
| A．Contradictory. | B．All-sided. | C．Doubtful. | D．Puzzling. |
| A．How to Stay Focused | B．The Harm of Distraction |
| C．The Research about Distraction | D．The Benefits of Keeping Focused |
【推荐3】Dogs tend to ignore suggestions from people who are lying. This is what Ludwig Huber’s team at the University of Vienna in Austria found in its recent experiment.
In the experiment, Huber and his colleagues first trained 260 dogs of various pure breeds to find hidden food in one of two covered bowls. The dogs learned to follow the suggestion of a person they had never met—the “communicator”—who would touch the food-filled bowl, glance at the dog, and say, “Look, this is very good!” Dogs appeared to trust this new person when they were reliably following the signal, says Huber.
Once that trust was established, the team had the dogs witness another person move the food from the first to the second bowl. The communicators were either in the room, and also witnessed the switch, or were briefly absent and so apparently unaware that the food had been switched. In either case, the communicators would later recommend the first bowl—which was now empty.
In previous versions of this experiment with children under age 5, Japanese macaques or chimpanzees, the participants reacted in particular ways. If a communicator had been absent during the food switch, it would appear that they couldn’t know where the treat really was. As such, the children, chimps or macaques would typically ignore a communicator who gave honest—but misleading—advice on where the food was, says Huber.
However, if the communicator had been in the room and witnessed the switch, but still recommended the first (now empty) bowl, young children and non-human primates (灵长目动物) were actually much more likely to follow the communicator’s knowingly misleading suggestion to approach the empty container. This may be because the children and non-human primates trusted the communicator over the evidence of their own eyes, says Huber.
The dogs in the new experiment, however, weren’t so trusting of lying communicators—much to the researchers’ surprise. Half of the dogs would follow the communicator’s misleading advice if the communicator hadn’t witnessed the food switch. But about two-thirds of dogs ignored a communicator who had witnessed the food switch and still recommended the now-empty bowl. These dogs simply went to the bowl filled with food instead. “They did not rely on the communicator anymore,” says Huber.
“This study reminds us that dogs are watching us closely, are picking up on our social signals, and are learning from us constantly even outside of formal training contexts,” says Monique Udell at Oregon State University.
Besides, the fact that half the dogs trusted the communicator who seemed to have made an honest mistake could reveal a lot about how dogs process social information, says Udell. “There is both genetic and behavioral evidence that dogs are hypersocial, meaning that many dogs have a difficult time ignoring social cues even when another solution might be more advantageous,” she says. “This is a really striking example of just how often this may occur.”
1. What did Huber and his colleagues try to do first?| A．To let dogs trust a stranger. | B．To train dogs to guide humans. |
| C．To communicate more with dogs. | D．To improve dogs’ ability to seek food. |
| A．They would be misled by the communicator. |
| B．They would ignore the communicator’s advice. |
| C．They would teach the communicator a good lesson. |
| D．They would keep a distance from the communicator. |
| A．Dogs tend to follow the communicator’s advice. |
| B．Dogs can be easily confused by the food switch. |
| C．Dogs can identify whether the communicator is lying. |
| D．Dogs can accurately understand humans’ social signals. |
| A．They are much smarter than humans. |
| B．They prefer to stay with honest humans. |
| C．They need to be trained to follow humans. |
| D．They can be easily influenced by social cues. |
In many countries of the world people do what is called house sitting. It means that if owners of the house are going away, they want someone to come into their home and look after the house and maybe pets while they are away.
In Australia, many people travel. After people retire, they might buy a van and travel all over the country.
So if someone wants to travel or go away for some reason, they might want someone in their home to care for it and keep the gardens tidy. House sitters might have to care for pets. Also, quite a few people have swimming pools in their back yard and they need cleaning.
There are some requirements to be a house sitter. You must be a trusted person, so that the home owner knows you will not steal anything. You must be able to go when the house owner wants you to go, so you need lots of free time.
Some house sitting jobs are just for a few days or a couple of weeks while the house owners have a short holiday. Sometimes it is for much longer. We have had one house sit for six months, while the home owner travelled to Europe.
| A．I have done house sitting many times. |
| B．Thousands of people do this all the time. |
| C．It is also possible to do house sitting in other countries. |
| D．Generally you have many opportunities to get a house sitting job. |
| E．You must take a little care over what your description says about you. |
| F．This is an international house sitting service for all city and country areas. |
| G．You must have a good car, so you can travel to different parts of the country. |
【推荐2】The Comfortable Kitchen: 105 Laid-Back. Healthy.and Wholesome Recipes
Here are healthy meals the whole family can enjoy, night after night.
What does comfort mean in The Comfortable Kitchen? For Alex Snodgrass. New York Times bestselling author of The Defined Dish , bringing her family around the table to share a home-cooked meal is a favorite way to show love Her recipes are designed to bring joy into that display of affection. from your own comfort cooking to your loved ones' delight at the delicious flavors, to knowing that you're caring for your family's nutrition with each bite.
There are plenty of recipes with simple, flexible ingredients for a meal when desired- perfect for people who are enjoying their " food freedom" stage of their health journey. And for those who have diet restrictions, Alex clearly marks each recipe as gluten-free(无麸质), dairy-free and grain-free,as appropriate.
Alex brings back the joy of being in the kitchen for those at all levels of cooking skills and provides food for every occasion. with soups, salads, pasta, vegetarian and non-vegetarian, ranging from one pot meals to not-so-junky junk food-and even cocktails and desserts with recipes including:
▲Cajun Chicken and Wild Rice Soup
▲Green Curry Poached Halibut with Herbs
▲Texas Style Brisket Tacos
▲Herby Green Olive Pasta with Feta
▲Sheet Pan Honey-Sesame Cauliflower
▲Clayton's Margarita
▲7-lngredient Almond Butter Cookies
With 105 approachable and nutritious recipes for real, busy life, The Comfortable Kitchen is a must-have cookbook for everyone who cares about what they eat and what they make.
1. What is the text about?| A．A dessert. | B．A cookbook. | C．Kitchen facilities. | D．Family meals. |
| A．It contains many recipes | B．It receives many complaints. |
| C．It can only be bought online. | D．It is published by New York Times. |
| A．Cooks. | B．Environmentalists. | C．Kids. | D．Publishers. |
【推荐3】When it comes to helping developing countries, we often think about offering money in order that they can build schools and hospitals, buy food and medicine, or find clean water supplies. These seem to be the most important basic needs in their lives. However, it's far from enough. We have to come up with better ideas.
A man called Nicholas Negroponte invented a cheap laptop computer, which he decided to invent after he visited a school in Cambodia. The laptop which Mr. Negroponte has designed is not the same as the normal one that you can buy in the shops. One difference is that it will be covered in rubber so that it is strong and won't be damaged easily. As an electricity supply can be a problem in developing countries, the computer also has a special handle in order that children can wind the computer up to give it extra power just as easy as setting a clock.
This special laptop computer will cost less than 100 US dollars and Mr. Negroponte wants to produce as many as 15 million laptop computers in the first year. The idea is that these computers will help the children’s education as they will be able to access the Internet. These computers might not benefit the people in developing countries immediately, but by improving children’s education they should help people to find their own solutions to their problems in the long term.
Another idea to help children in developing countries is to recycle old mobile phones so that they can be used again in the UK and probably in many other countries too, millions of mobile phones are thrown away every year. The waste crested by throwing away these old phones is very bad for the environment, so it seems to be an excellent idea to achieve two important goals at the same time. We will reduce the waste we produce and help others, in other words, we will be able to “kill two birds with one stone” and that is always a good thing.
1. The underlined phrase “wind up” in paragraph 2 means .| A．吹风 | B．给……上紧发条 | C．拆开 | D．带走 |
| A．will be damaged much easier than the normal one |
| B．has a special handle to access the Internet |
| C．is cheap and can run with extra power |
| D．can be helpful to find the people’s own solutions |
| A．illustrate the kindness of people in the developed countries |
| B．tell us what high technology can help people |
| C．show how to find business opportunities in developing countries |
| D．give an example of how to help developing countries |
| A．We need to think about more ways to help people in developing countries，not just throw money at the problem. |
| B．We should spend much money helping people in developing countries build more schools and hospitals. |
| C．We should think about giving help to developing countries by giving them all we have. |
| D．We should help the people in developing countries by improving children's education immediately. |
