Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's 'Flow'

'Flow' and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1999) discussed by David Farmer.

Flow with Soul (2002): Interview by Elizabeth Debold where Csikzentmihalyi talks about evolution and greater complexity.

My hunch is—and, of course, there is no proof of this—that if an organism, a species, learns to find a positive experience in doing something that stretches its ability; in other words, if you enjoy sticking your neck out and trying to operate at your best or even beyond your best, if you're lucky enough to get that combination, then you're more likely to learn new things, to become better at what you're doing, to invent new things, to discover new things. We seem to be a species that has been blessed by this kind of thirst for pushing the envelope. Most other species seem to be very content when their basic needs are taken care of and their homeostatic level has been restored. They have eaten; they can rest now. That's it. But in our nervous system, maybe by chance or at random, an association has been made between pleasure and challenge, or looking for new challenges.

The Creative Personality: Ten Paradoxical Traits

Alliteration and Memory Performance

Sweet Silent Thought: Alliteration and Resonance in Poetry Comprehension (2008) by R Brooke Lea, et. al.:

We used current theories of language comprehension as a framework for understanding how alliteration affects comprehension processes. Across three experiments, alliterative cues reactivated readers' memories for previous information when it was phonologically similar to the cue. These effects were obtained when participants read aloud and when they read silently, and with poetry and prose. The results support everyday intuitions about the effects of poetry and aesthetics, and explain the nature of such effects. These findings extend the scope of general memory models by indicating their capacity to explain the influence of nonsemantic discourse features.

Discussion by Dave Munger here.