Foraging for New Ideas: Search and Research in Divergent Thinking Tasks

Abstract

ABSTRACT More than 50 years since the introduction of the concept of divergent production, little progress has been made in the development of parsimonious theoretical models that sufficiently explain creativity. Recently, the optimal foraging theory has been used to explain the search for items in memory tasks, suggesting the correspondence between the ability to search in a real environment and cognitive search as an essential part of cognitive models. However, the relationship between external search and divergent thinking tasks has not been empirically tested. Eight hundred and fifty-nine children were evaluated through tasks that require the visual or semantic search of information. A confirmatory factor analysis model showed that several models presented good adjustment indices. The best fit presented was a model of two latent independent factors and a general first-order factor that shows that external search and divergent thinking tasks share common mechanisms. This data empirically supports the theoretical development of the concept of divergent production under a novel empirical and evolutionary perspective that relates divergent thinking with the external and internal exploratory capacity.