Divergent Thinking Performance Research Articles

Managing Your Muse: Exploring Three Levels of Metacognitive Control in Creative Ideation

ABSTRACT Creative ideation tasks are typically ill-defined and thus should benefit from metacognition. However, the role of metacognitive processes―especially metacognitive control―in creative ideation appears understudied. Therefore, we conducted an online study investigating the relationship between different aspects of metacognitive control and divergent thinking (DT) performance. In line with the recently proposed creative metacognition framework , we devised measures that delineate metacognitive control at the levels of task, performance, and responses: Metacognitive control at task level was assessed in terms of attention focus devoted to each task; metacognitive control at performance level was assessed in terms of the goal-directedness of the employed task strategy; metacognitive control at response level was assessed in terms of how effectively uncreative ideas were screened out. We observed substantial individual differences in all three measures as well as first evidence of their validity. Importantly, metacognitive control at all three levels independently predicted higher DT creativity. Additional analyses suggested that effects of metacognitive control may extend to creative behavior, partly mediated by DT. In sum, this study provides first empirical support for the relevance of distinguishable aspects of metacognitive control at task, performance, and response levels in creative performance.

Performance and Perception of Creativity and Academic Achievement in Elementary School Students: A Normal Mixture Modeling Study

ABSTRACTCreativity can be assessed using various methods, including divergent thinking performance, self‐ratings, and teacher ratings. However, these measures may not always align, as they may not consistently identify creative potential in the same manner. The present study aimed to identify latent subgroups of students based on their observed originality, creative self‐efficacy, teacher‐rated originality, academic achievement in reading and mathematics, and demographic background characteristics. Data were collected from 243 elementary school students. We applied the normal mixture technique to classify participants into latent subgroups. Five latent subgroups of students were identified: Overconfident Low Performers, Creative High Achievers, Under‐Confident Below‐Average Achievers, Mathematically Oriented Students, and Calibrated Above‐Average Achievers. Female students tended to fall disproportionately into the subgroup of Creative High Achievers. Students receiving free/reduced lunch had a lower probability of being Creative High Achievers. Special education students had a higher probability of falling into the subgroup Overconfident Low Performers. Teacher ratings of students' originality were more in line with student academic performance rather than with their performance‐based originality scores. Students' self‐ratings of creativity bifurcated across subgroups, with Creative High Achievers and Overconfident Low Performers reporting the highest self‐ratings of originality, despite displaying very different levels of performance on the divergent thinking assessment.

Association between cortical thickness or surface area and divergent thinking in patients with bipolar disorder.

Divergent thinking is a critical creative cognitive process. Its neural mechanisms have been well-studied through structural and functional imaging in healthy individuals but are less explored in patients with bipolar disorder (BD). Because of the traditional link between creativity and BD, this study investigated the structural correlates of divergent thinking in patients with BD through surface-based morphometry. Fifty-nine patients diagnosed with BD I or BD II (35.3 ± 8.5 years) and 56 age- and sex-matched controls (33.9 ± 7.4 years) were recruited. The participants underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging and an evaluation of divergent thinking by using the Chinese version of the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults (ATTA). FreeSurfer 7.0 was used to generate thickness and surface area maps for each participant. Brainwise regression of the association between cortical thickness or surface area and ATTA performance was conducted using general linear models. Divergent thinking performance did not differ significantly between the patients with BD and the healthy controls. In these patients, total ATTA score was negatively correlated with cortical thickness in the right middle frontal gyrus, right occipital, and left precuneus but positively correlated with the surface area of the right superior frontal gyrus. By contrast, total ATTA scores and cortical thickness or surface area were not significantly correlated among the controls. The findings indicate that divergent thinking involves cerebral structures for executive control, mental imagery, and visual processing in patients with BD, and the right prefrontal cortex might be the most crucial of these structures.

Can Creativity and Cognitive Reserve Predict Psychological Well-Being in Older Adults? The Role of Divergent Thinking in Healthy Aging

The maintenance of psychological well-being (PWB) in the older adult population is a pivotal goal for our rapidly aging society. PWB is a multicomponent construct that can be influenced by several factors in the lifespan. The beneficial role of divergent thinking (DT) and cognitive reserve (CR) in sustaining older subjects’ PWB has been scarcely investigated so far. The present study aims to investigate the relationships between DT, CR, and PWB in a sample of 121 healthy older adults (61 females; M age: 73.39 ± 6.66 years; M education: 11.33 ± 4.81 years). The results highlight that better DT performance predicts higher CR, which mediates an indirect positive effect of DT on emotional competence, one of the PWB factors. It follows that DT and CR can be considered protective factors in aging, and their effects go beyond cognitive functioning, revealing a positive effect even on some PWB components. The practical implications regarding targeted health interventions for prevention in the older adult population to support well-being and promote healthy aging are discussed.

Divergent thinking benefits from functional antagonism of the left IFG and right TPJ: a transcranial direct current stimulation study.

Divergent thinking is assumed to benefit from releasing the constraint of existing knowledge (i.e. top-down control) and enriching free association (i.e. bottom-up processing). However, whether functional antagonism between top-down control-related and bottom-up processing-related brain structures is conducive to generating original ideas is largely unknown. This study was designed to investigate the effect of functional antagonism between the left inferior frontal gyrus and the right temporoparietal junction on divergent thinking performance. A within-subjects design was adopted for three experiments. A total of 114 participants performed divergent thinking tasks after receiving transcranial direct current stimulation over target regions. In particular, cathodal stimulation over the left inferior frontal gyrus and anodal stimulation over the right inferior frontal gyrus (Experiment 1), anodal stimulation over the right temporoparietal junction (Experiment 2), and both cathodal stimulation over the left inferior frontal gyrus and anodal stimulation over the right temporoparietal junction (Experiment 3) were manipulated. Compared with sham stimulation, the combination of hyperpolarization of the left inferior frontal gyrus and depolarization of the right temporoparietal junction comprehensively promoted the fluency, flexibility, and originality of divergent thinking without decreasing the rationality of generated ideas. Functional antagonism between the left inferior frontal gyrus (hyperpolarization) and right temporoparietal junction (depolarization) has a "1 + 1 > 2" superposition effect on divergent thinking.

Individual differences and creative ideation: neuromodulatory signatures of mindset and response inhibition.

This study addresses the modulatory role of individual mindset in explaining the relationship between response inhibition (RI) and divergent thinking (DT) using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). Forty undergraduate students (22 male and 18 female), aged between 18 and 23 years (average age = 19 years, SD = 1.48), were recruited. Participants received either anodal tDCS of the right IFG coupled with cathodal tDCS of the left IFG (R + L-; N = 19) or the opposite coupling (R-L+; N = 21). We tested DT performance using the alternative uses task (AUT), measuring participants' fluency, originality, and flexibility in the response production, as well as participants' mindsets. Furthermore, we applied a go-no-go task to examine the role of RI before and after stimulating the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) using tDCS. The results showed that the mindset levels acted as moderators on stimulation conditions and enhanced RI on AUT fluency and flexibility but not originality. Intriguingly, growth mindsets have opposite moderating effects on the change in DT, resulting from the tDCS stimulation of the left and the right IFG, with reduced fluency but enhanced flexibility. Our findings imply that understanding neural modulatory signatures of ideational processes with tDCS strongly benefits from evaluating cognitive status and control functions.

The association between divergent thinking, personality, and listening to classical music

Divergent thinking (DT) enables flexible thinking and the generation of a wider range of original ideas that form the basis of creativity. Although personality traits and music listening have been found to be positively correlated with DT performance, the association remains inconclusive. Furthermore, there is a debate regarding whether originality should be included as an index to measure DT. The present study examines the association between DT, personality, and classical music listening. There were 162 Malaysian adults who participated in this experiment. Participants were randomly allocated to either happy, sad classical music (i.e., listen to a repeated clip of happy or sad music), or silent conditions (i.e., no music was played). DT and personality were assessed with Figural and Realistic DT Tests and 44-item personality model with five broad factors, respectively. Positive intercorrelations were found between fluency, flexibility, originality, and DT total score. A weak positive correlation was revealed between DT total score and openness trait. However, there was no significant difference between happy, sad music, and silent conditions on DT performance. The findings support the notion that fluency, flexibility, and originality are the essential indices in measuring DT performance. The results suggest that open-minded people have better DT performance.

The Role of Cognition in Divergent Thinking: Implications for Successful Aging.

Promoting active and successful aging has become crucial to improve quality of life in later adulthood and reduce the impact of cognitive decline. Increasing evidence suggested that the ability to think creatively (e.g., via divergent thinking), similar to cognitive reserve, could represent a beneficial factor against the negative effects of aging. However, there is still little evidence investigating the relationships between divergent thinking, cognitive functions, and cognitive reserve in late adulthood. The present study explored these relationships in a sample of 98 individuals ranging from 61 to 88 years old (mean age: 72.44 ± 6.35). Results showed that visual, but not verbal, divergent thinking was affected by aging. Interestingly, visual divergent thinking performance was predicted by both the cognitive component of crystallized intelligence and cognitive reserve. Only the crystallized component of intelligence was found to mediate the aging effect on visual divergent thinking performance. These results suggest that in later adulthood a potential shift strategy to prior knowledge and semantic components over executive and control components of cognition could underlie a preserved ability to think divergently and, plausibly, creatively. Limitations of the study and implications for successful aging are discussed.

The moderating effect of the DMN connectivity on the correlation between online creativity performances in single- and paired-player modes

This study examined how brain structure influences creative performance during cooperation with others. This study employed graph theory to analyze the moderating effect of connectivity efficiency of a default mode network (DMN) on individuals' creative performance in interactive situations. The results showed that the global efficiencies of the DMN moderated the relationship between individuals' divergent thinking performance in the single- and paired-player modes. When the global efficiency in the DMN is high, an individual's originality performance in the single-player mode has high predictive power for performance in the paired-player mode. In addition, the global efficiency of the DMN can moderate the relationship between the flexibility scores in the single- and paired-player modes. In the case of high global efficiency, the flexibility performance in single-player mode has a higher predictive power in interactive situations. Furthermore, the nodal efficiency of the parahippocampal cortex can moderate the correlation between fluency (an index of divergent thinking) scores in the single- and paired-player modes, whereas the nodal efficiency of the anterior medial prefrontal cortex can moderate the relationship between the Chinese Radical Remote Associates Test performance in the single- and paired-player modes.

THE ROLE OF DIVERGENT THINKING IN INTERPERSONAL TRUST DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: CREATIVE ASPECTS

Interpersonal trust relies on positive expectations about other people. Social psychology distinguishes ingroup (individuals share social identity, e.g., family) from outgroup trust (individuals do not share social identity, e.g., strangers). We conducted an experimental study to test if divergent thinking, which relies on an inclusive processing mode, differently affected ingroup and outgroup trust during the lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A sample of 114 healthy college students, with no prior or current COVID-19 infection (mean age = 23.66, sd = 2.53, 89% women) was recruited. Interpersonal trust was measured by three ingroup and three outgroup trust items. Divergent thinking was measured by the alternative uses task, which asked to find alternative uses for common objects. Divergent thinking was scored by two independent raters in terms of fluency and quality of ideas. To control for generalized anxiety and mood states, the generalized anxiety disorder scale and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule were administered, respectively. To control for the inclusiveness of divergent thinking performance, the alternative uses task was administered using three types of instructions. Thus, the sample was divided in three groups of 38 participants according to the divergent thinking task instructions: “be-fluent: find as many different uses for the objects”, “be-creative: find creative uses for the objects”, and “be fluent and creative: find as many different and creative uses of the objects”. The hierarchical regression analyses showed that the quality, but not the quantity of divergent thinking positively predicted only outgroup trust, whereas the mood positively predicted ingroup trust. Divergent thinking task instructions did not affect interpersonal trust. Thus, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the quality of divergent thinking supports only outgroup trust based on the inclusive processing mode, meaning that people showing high ability to produce uncommon, remote and clever ideas are more inclusive and by consequence more prone to trust strangers. Limitations and implications are discussed.

Evaluating the effects of episodic and semantic memory induction procedures on divergent thinking in younger and older adults.

Evidence suggesting that episodic specificity induction improves divergent thinking performance in younger and older adults has been taken as indicative of the role of declarative memory processes in creativity. A series of studies were carried out to verify the specificity of such findings by investigating the effects of several novel episodic and semantic memory induction procedures on a widely employed measure of divergent creative thinking (the Alternate Uses Task), in comparison to a control induction and a no-induction baseline in both younger and older adults. There was no clear evidence for a specific role played by the induction of episodic or semantic memory processes in facilitating creative thinking across the three experiments, and the effects of the induction procedures (episodic, semantic and control) on divergent thinking were not comparable across age groups. On the other hand, higher levels of creativity were generally associated with older adults (60-80 years). In Experiments 2 and 3, older adults generated a greater number of responses (fluency), more unique responses (average originality, peak originality, creativity ratings) and more varied responses (flexibility) than younger adults (18-30 years). The findings are discussed in relation to the specificity of declarative memory operations and their impact on creative thinking, especially within the context of healthy ageing.

Creative or not? Hierarchical diffusion modeling of the creative evaluation process.

When producing creative ideas (i.e., ideas that are original and useful) two main processes occur: ideation, where people brainstorm ideas, and evaluation, where they decide if the ideas are creative or not. While much is known about the ideation phase, the cognitive processes involved in creativity evaluation are less clear. In this article, we present a novel modeling approach for the evaluation phase of creativity. We apply the drift diffusion model (DDM) to the Creative-or-Not task (CON-task) to study the cognitive basis of evaluation and to examine individual differences in the extent to which people take originality and utility into account when evaluating creative ideas. The CON-task is a timed decision-making task where participants indicate whether they find uses for certain objects creative or not (e.g., using a book as a buoy). The different uses vary on the two creativity dimensions "originality" and "utility." In two studies (n = 293, 17,806 trials; n = 152, 9,291 trials), we found that stimulus originality was strongly related to participants' drift rates but found only weak evidence for an association between stimulus utility and the drift rate. However, participants differed substantially in the effects of originality and utility. Furthermore, the implicit weights assigned to originality and utility on the CON-task were associated with self-reported importance ratings of originality and utility and with divergent thinking performance in the Alternative Uses task (AUT). This research provides a cognitive modeling approach to creativity evaluation and underlines the importance of communicating rating criteria in divergent thinking tasks to ensure a fair assessment of creative ability. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Are STEM Students Creative Thinkers?

Scholarly research has increasingly examined the role of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education, and that of creativity as a transversal skill. However, far fewer studies have investigated the relationship between the two, particularly in secondary-school contexts, and they have obtained inconsistent results. This paper contributes to the literature by asking: To what extent is studying STEM associated with higher levels of creativity in a secondary-school context? The study utilises a pre-existing dataset gathered in Malta (EU) from some 400 students aged between 11 and 16 years old. It yields information on both the engagement in STEM (measured by exposure to STEM chosen by students as optional subjects, and the enjoyment of STEM considered by students to be their favourite subjects), as well as creativity levels (measured by Divergent Thinking performance on Alternate Uses Tests). Correlation analysis revealed a strong positive link between the two phenomena, lending support to the notion that STEM students tend to be more creative than other students. Using regression analysis, a model is estimated to identify the possible effects of engaging in STEM subjects on creativity, once the other co-determinants of creativity are controlled. The results indicate that both the exposure to STEM subject/s and enjoyment thereof significantly and positively predict creativity, even after controlling for the other possible determinants of creativity (such as age, gender, parental education, and participation in creative activities). These findings offer encouraging insights into 21st century education and for curriculum development as they suggest that, in addition to having value in their own right, STEM subjects can contribute to the development of creativity in young people.

Moderating Role of Creative Mindset in the Effect of Metacognitive Experience on Insight Problem Solving.

Metacognitive experience, measured by processing fluency, contributes to divergent thinking performance; however, whether it exhibits varying effects on insight problem-solving remains unknown. Additionally, as individuals' interpretation of metacognitive experience is influenced by their creative mindset, whether creative mindset plays a role in the relationship between metacognitive experience and insight problem-solving is another issue. In Experiment 1, a Chinese logogriph task was used to investigate insight problem-solving performance. The font style of logogriphs (easy versus difficult) was used to alter the ease of processing. The results showed that individuals had lower performance accuracy for logogriphs presented in difficult font styles, suggesting the negative effect of metacognitive disfluency experience on logogriph solving. In Experiment 2, different creative mindsets (entity versus incremental) were activated in individuals via prime manipulation. Individuals with an incremental creative mindset had a significantly higher performance accuracy and longer reaction time for logogriphs presented in difficult font styles than individuals with an entity creative mindset, suggesting that an incremental creative mindset might counteract the negative effect of metacognitive disfluency experience on logogriphs solving. These findings suggest that metacognitive disfluency experience has a negative effect on insight problem-solving and that a creative mindset moderated this effect.

Testing the effects of time-on-task and instructions to “be creative” on gifted students

Divergent thinking (DT) tests are sometimes used to select students for gifted programs. Studies on these tests, mostly conducted on non-gifted students, suggest that performance is influenced by the type of instruction given (standard vs. hybrid “be fluent AND original”) and time-on-task. The current study aimed to examine the effect of instructions and time-on-task on divergent thinking performance in gifted and non-gifted students in a 2 [gifted versus non-gifted] × 2 [standard versus hybrid instructions] design. The results showed that gifted students outperformed non-gifted students in fluency, while no significant difference was found between the two groups in originality. Creativity instructions improved both originality and fluency scores in verbal but not figural tests. As for time-on-task, gifted students took more time when completing DT tests as well as when they were given explicit instructions to “be creative.” Implications for gifted identification are discussed.

Influence of Analytic Processing on Divergent and Convergent Thinking Tasks: The Role of Rational and Experiential Thinking Styles

Scientific interest in the relationship between analytic processing and creativity has increased in recent years. However, there is conflicting evidence on whether analytic processing reduces or enhances creativity. We hypothesize that differences in creativity measurement paradigms (divergent or convergent thinking tasks) and the research orientation of analytic processing (dispositional or situational) may explain the conflicting findings. The present study aims to investigate how priming analytic processing affects individuals' performance on divergent and convergent thinking tasks and the moderating role of thinking styles. In Study 1 (N = 155), participants were assigned to either an analytic processing group or a control group and performed convergent thinking (Remote Associates Task) and divergent thinking (Alternative Uses Test) tasks after priming. In Study 2 (N = 119), we conducted a priming paradigm of analytic processing that differed from Study 1, and a personal experiential-rational thinking style was introduced as a moderator. Results showed that priming analytic processing promoted convergent thinking performance but decreased fluency and flexibility scores on the divergent thinking task (Study 1). Notably, the effect of priming analytic processing on divergent thinking performance was significant only for participants with higher levels of rational thinking style (Study 2). These results suggest that thinking styles and dimensions of creativity should be considered in the relationship between analytic processing and creativity.

Measuring child-level originality through the strategic use of incubation periods during divergent thinking assessment

Divergent thinking, which can be described as the ability to conceive of and express a variety of novel solutions to open-ended problems (Gibson et al., 2009), is one of the most commonly studied constructs related to creative thinking. There is considerable evidence that divergent thinking is predictive of later creative behavior and achievement. However, current methods depend heavily on social comparison as a means for operationalizing children's divergent thinking outcomes, which may diminish the ability to detect key indicators of creative potential, such as child-level originality. The current study introduces a child-level, “personal-originality” approach to scoring children's performance in common divergent thinking tasks. While originality is often assessed in terms of statistical rarity or subjective ratings, personal-originality scoring captures divergent thinking at the child level through the strategic use of incubation periods. That is, children demonstrate personal originality by producing new ideas after time away from the task. The current study explored the effects of a 2 min incubation period on 42 three- to six-year-olds’ divergent thinking performance. Results indicate children do, indeed, produce original ideas after time off-task. Moreover, the personal-originality outcome measure introduced in the present study demonstrated strong evidence of convergent validity.

What can you do with a bottle and a hanger? Students with high cognitive flexibility give more ideas in the presence of ambient noise

Creativity has become a favourable skill to develop in higher education due to its value in society. Ambient noise during creative performance has traditionally been regarded as an environmental stressor and distractor, but recent findings suggest a positive impact of ambient noise on creative performance. It is still unclear what drives these inconsistent findings and whether individual differences between students explain the differential impact of noise on their performance. This study investigated the impact of ambient noise on divergent thinking performance in undergraduates during the COVID-19 pandemic, when common learning spaces were restricted and people were instructed to work from home. It also explored how cognitive flexibility (e.g., the ability to switch between different tasks and explore different strategies to problems) interacted with the impact of noise. Forty-two undergraduates completed an adult computer-based version of the Dimensional Change Card Sort task (DCCS) (a measure of cognitive flexibility) in silence, and the Alternative Uses Task (a measure of divergent thinking) in silence and in ambient noise displayed through headphones. On average, participants gave more ideas in the presence of ambient noise than in silence, but these ideas were not more original. Furthermore, the impact of noise interacted with cognitive flexibility. Participants who were more efficient at the DCCS (suggesting better cognitive flexibility) gave more ideas in noise. These findings can help to inform educational institutes and students on the influence the physical environment might have on divergent thinking.

Fixation, flexibility, and creativity: The dynamics of mind wandering.

The mind-wandering literature is long on results and short on theory. One notable exception is the Dynamic Framework, a theoretical framework that characterizes mind wandering as thoughts that are relatively unconstrained from deliberate and automatic sources, or "freely moving." Critically, this framework makes numerous testable predictions, including (a) a positive association between freely moving thought and ADHD, (b) negative associations between freely moving thought and depression, anxiety, and OCD, and (c) a positive association between freely moving thought and divergent thinking ability. In Study 1, to test these predictions, we measured participants' reports of freely moving thoughts during a cognitive task and assessed divergent thinking and various psychopathological symptoms. Results failed to support any of the Dynamic Framework's predictions. In Study 2, we assessed the predicted relations between freely moving thought and divergent-thinking performance by manipulating thought constraint during a creative-incubation interval that preceded a divergent-thinking task. Here, we found some evidence (albeit very weak) to support the Dynamic Framework's prediction. Finally, in Study 3, we examined the possibility that indexing freely moving thought during a divergent-thinking task would yield the predicted associations but failed to find support for these associations. These results, most of which are at odds with the predictions of the Dynamic Framework, suggest either the need to revise the framework and/or that current methods are inadequate to properly test these predictions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The Role of Metacognitive Strategy Monitoring and Control in the Relationship between Creative Mindsets and Divergent Thinking Performance.

Previous research has shown that creative mindsets influence creativity. Compared with people with a fixed creative mindset, those with a growth creative mindset performed better in creative tasks. The underlying mechanism, however, is not completely understood. The present study has extended previous works to explore whether metacognitive strategy monitoring and control influence the relationship between creative mindsets and divergent thinking performance. The thinking aloud method was used to summarize four strategies in a divergent thinking task (an alternative uses task, AUT) in a pilot study: memory retrieval, splitting, property-based, and general use strategies. In the formal study, the creative mindsets scale, AUT, self-strategic utility judgment (i.e., an index of metacognitive strategy monitoring), and frequency of strategies usage (i.e., an index of metacognitive strategy control) were used to explore the relationships among creative mindsets, divergent thinking, and metacognitive strategy monitoring and control. The results indicated a positive correlation between a growth creative mindset and divergent thinking but a negative correlation between a fixed creative mindset and divergent thinking. More importantly, there were identified mediating roles of metacognitive monitoring and control of splitting and property-based strategies in the relationship between creative mindsets and divergent thinking. The findings reveal that creative mindsets are a critical predictor of divergent thinking, and metacognitive monitoring and control of abstract strategies mediate this association.