Serial Order Effect Research Articles

Qian Xuesen's question I: Collectivism's influence on serial order effect in divergent thinking

Westerners are better at divergent thinking than Easterners, and previous studies have found this difference relates to collectivism-individualism, however, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between individualism-collectivism and divergent thinking from the perspective of semantic networks. A total of 158 participants were measured with the scale of collectivism-individualism tendencies and divergent thinking. Results showed that collectivism and individualism were not significantly associated with the performance of divergent thinking in figural task. And collectivism, rather than individualism, exhibited a negative correlation with originality but a positive correlation with appropriateness in verbal task. Furthermore, collectivism moderated the serial order of originality and appropriateness in verbal task. This study provides preliminary insights into the impact of culture on creativity from semantic network perspectives.

Generating mathematical strategies shows evidence of a serial order effect

This study investigated whether performance on a mathematical strategy-generating task showed evidence for a serial order effect (decreasing fluency but increasing originality and creativity of strategies over time). One-hundred and fifty-five undergraduate students generated as many strategies as they could to solve a three-digit subtraction problem for 8 min, and the resulting strategies were evaluated using fluency and originality indexes that were heavily informed by research on creativity. Results showed evidence for a serial order effect, such that strategy fluency decreased across the working period, but later strategies were rated as more original/creative. These results demonstrates that classroom practices that encourage strategy generation can be a useful tool to help students think more creatively in mathematics.

Synaptic Facilitation: A Key Biological Mechanism for Resource Allocation in Computational Models of Working Memory

Working memory (WM) is a crucial cognitive function required to maintain and manipulate information that is no longer present through the senses. Two key features of WM are its limited capacity and the emergence of serial order effects. This study investigates how synaptic facilitation and diverse display dynamics influence the encoding and retention of multiple items in WM. A biophysically inspired attractor model of WM, endowed with synaptic facilitation, is considered in this study. The investigation delves into the behaviour of the model under both sequential and simultaneous display protocols. Synaptic facilitation plays a crucial role in establishing the response of the WM system by regulating resource allocation during the encoding stage. It boosts WM capacity and is a key mechanism in the emergence of serial order effects. The synaptic facilitation time constant (τF\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\ au _F$$\\end{document}) is critical in modulating these effects, and its heterogeneity in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) may contribute to the combination of primacy and recency effects observed experimentally. Additionally, we demonstrate that the WM capacity exhibited by the network is heavily influenced by factors such as the stimuli nature, and their display duration. Although the network connectivity determines the WM capacity by regulating the excitation-inhibition balance, the display protocol modulates its effective limit. Our findings shed light on how different stimulation protocol dynamics affect WM, underscoring the importance of synaptic facilitation and experimental protocol design in modulating WM capacity.

Lost in translation? Not for Large Language Models: Automated divergent thinking scoring performance translates to non-English contexts

Divergent thinking (DT) has been at the heart of creativity measurement for over seven decades. At the same time, large-scale usage of DT tests is limited due to the tedious procedure of scoring the responses, which often requires several judges to assess thousands of participants’ ideas. Across two studies (N = 195 and N = 404), we examined the quality of artificial intelligence-based scoring models (Ocsai, Organisciak et al., 2023) to score Alternate Uses Tasks (Study 1: brick, Study 2: brick, can, rope). Based on more than 6000 ideas provided by participants in Polish and automatically translated to English, we fit a series of idea (response)- and prompt (object)-level structural equation models. When artificial intelligence-based and semantic distance scores were modeled together, latent correlations with human ratings ranged from r = 0.56 to r = 0.95 at the response (idea) level and from r = 0.61 to r = 0.99 at the object (prompt) level. A hierarchical (i.e., person-level) model with three DT tasks modeled together (Study 2) demonstrated a latent correlation between automatized and human ratings of r = 0.96 (Babbage) and r = 0.98 (DaVinci). Notably, the same results were obtained based on untranslated responses provided in Polish. Automated and human scores provided the same serial-order effect pattern and the same profile of differences under “be fluent” vs. “be creative” instructions. This investigation offers an initial yet compelling argument that the new algorithms provide a close-to-perfect score of DT tasks when benchmarked against human ratings, even when the responses are created in a different language and automatically translated to English or used in an untranslated form.

Accelerating Creativity: Effects of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on the Temporal Dynamics of Divergent Thinking

ABSTRACT Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) has been shown to enhance divergent and convergent creative thinking. Yet, how stimulation impacts creative performance over time, and what cognitive mechanisms underlie any such enhancement, remain largely unanswered questions. In the present research, we aimed to (1) verify the impact of DLPFC tDCS on both convergent and divergent thinking, and further investigated (2) the temporal dynamics of divergent thinking, focusing on the serial order effect (i.e., the tendency for ideas to become more original and less frequent over time), and (3) any role that cognitive inhibition may play in mediating any effect of stimulation on creative thinking (considering the DLPFC’s involvement in driving inhibitory processes that are also relevant for creative thinking). In a within-subjects design, twenty-six participants received three types of cross-hemispheric tDCS stimulation over the DLPFC (left cathodal and right anodal, L-R+; left anodal and right cathodal, L+R-; and sham). Before stimulation, they completed a pre-flanker task measuring cognitive inhibition; during stimulation, they completed the Alternate Uses Task (AUT), Remote Associates Test (RAT), and post-flanker task. Results showed that, compared with the sham stimulation, originality of responses in the AUT was significantly enhanced in the L+R- condition, while no tDCS effect was observed for the RAT. Additionally, compared with the other stimulation conditions, we found a diminished serial order effect in the L+R- condition characterized by an accelerated production of more original ideas. Critically, the L+R- condition was accompanied by better performance on the flanker task. Our findings thus verify that L+R- tDCS over the DLPFC accelerates idea originality also providing tentative clues that inhibition may act as a cognitive mechanism underlying enhancements in divergent thinking resulting from frontal lobe neuromodulation.

The Dynamic Creativity Framework

Abstract. The dynamic creativity framework (DCF) represents a new theoretical perspective for studying the creativity construct. This framework is based on the dynamic definition of creativity, and it has both theoretical and empirical implications. From a theoretical point of view, we review the characteristics of the dynamic creative process and its extension into the dynamic universal creative process, encompassing creativity at different layers of complexity. We discuss the key concept of creative potential, considering individual, sociocultural, and material viewpoints, and we show how the DCF is instrumental in clarifying the relationship between creativity and intelligence, between creativity and anticipation, as well as in introducing the concept of ‘organic creativity’. From the empirical perspective, we focus on the dynamic creative process broken down into four phases: i) drive, ii) information, iii) idea generation, iv) idea evaluation. We review results obtained through investigations accounting for the dynamic interplay between emotional and cognitive components defining creative performance for each. Experiments were conducted to measure the role of emotions and attention in driving the dynamic process, considering the processing of apparently irrelevant information and the interaction between idea generation and idea evaluation, always taking into account individual differences as measured through personality traits, performance variables, or lifetime achievement. Neurophysiological evidence is considered in discussing dynamic effects in divergent thinking, such as the serial order effect, as well as the possibility to enhance creative potential through neurofeedback. Finally, we report on the effects of different environments on the creative process, highlighting the dynamics produced by context-embeddedness.

An order-dependent transfer model in categorization

Most categorization models are insensitive to the order in which stimuli are presented. However, a vast array of studies have shown that the sequence received during learning can influence how categories are formed. In this paper, the objective was to better account for effects of serial order. We developed a model called Ordinal General Context Model (OGCM) based on the Generalized Context Model (GCM), which we modified to incorporate ordinal information. OGCM incorporates serial order as a feature along ordinary physical features, allowing it to account for the effect of sequential order as a form of distortion of the feature space. The comparison between the models showed that integrating serial order during learning in the OGCM provided the best account of classification of the stimuli in our data sets.

Serial order effect during divergent thinking: A new perspective on the dynamic mechanism of creative thought processes

Serial order effect during divergent thinking: A new perspective on the dynamic mechanism of creative thought processes

Russian-German five-year-olds: What omissions in sentence repetition tell us about linguistic knowledge, memory skills and their interrelation.

In error analyses using sentence repetition data, most authors focus on word types of omissions. The current study considers serial order in omission patterns independent of functional categories. Data was collected from Russian and German sentence repetition tasks performed by 53 five-year-old bilingual children. Number and positions of word omissions were analyzed. Serial order effects were found in both languages: medial errors made up the largest percentage of errors. Then, the position of omissions was compared to visuo-verbal n-back working memory and non-verbal visual forward short-term memory scores using stepwise hierarchical linear regression models, taking into account demographic variables and receptive language. The interaction differed between languages: there was a significant negative association between omissions in the medial position in German and the final position in Russian and the visuo-verbal n-back memory score. Our study contributes to the understanding of how working memory and language are intertwined in sentence repetition.

Serial Order Effect in Divergent Thinking in Five- to Six-Year-Olds: Individual Differences as Related to Executive Functions.

This study examined the unfolding in real time of original ideas during divergent thinking (DT) in five- to six-year-olds and related individual differences in DT to executive functions (EFs). The Alternative Uses Task was administered with verbal prompts that encouraged children to report on their thinking processes while generating uses for daily objects. In addition to coding the originality of each use, the domain-specific DT processes memory retrieval and mental operations were coded from children’s explanations. Six EF tasks were administered and combined into composites to measure working memory, shifting, inhibition, and selective attention. The results replicated findings of a previous study with the same children but at age four years: (1) there was a serial order effect of the originality of uses; and (2) the process mental operations predicted the originality of uses. Next, the results revealed that both domain-general EFs and domain-specific executive processes played a role in the real-time unfolding of original ideas during DT. Particularly, the DT process mental operations was positively related to the early generation of original ideas, while selective attention was negatively related to the later generation of original ideas. These findings deepen our understanding of how controlled executive processes operate during DT.

Divergent thinking in four-year-old children: An analysis of thinking processes in performing the Alternative Uses Task

The present study examined the divergent thinking (DT) processes of four-year-old children, as part of a longitudinal project that investigates the development of DT in children. Following a similar approach used in a study with adults, children were encouraged to report on their thinking processes through interactive dialogues while performing a widely used DT task, the Alternative Uses Task (AUT). Content analysis of children’s utterances revealed that children generated uses mostly based on automatic, bottom-up associative processes and occasionally based on effortful, top-down executive processes. Using (multilevel) regression analysis, we found that (1) both associative and executive DT processes predicted children’s fluency scores on the AUT, whilst only the executive DT process Performing mental operations on the stimulus uniquely predicted originality; (2) children at the age of four years already showed a serial order effect in the originality of their responses, indicating that the originality of uses increased the later a particular use was generated in the series of mentioned uses; and (3) similar serial order effects characterized the occurrence of executive processes. These results suggest that increasing originality depends on increasing involvement of effortful executive processes. Especially the executive process of mentally isolating properties or parts of objects and the subsequent recombination of these parts and properties into a new structured whole might be a key characteristic of DT to generate original ideas.

An Experimental Approach to Investigate the Involvement of Cognitive Load in Divergent Thinking.

Up to now, support for the idea that a controlled component exists in creative thought has mainly been supported by correlational studies; to further shed light on this issue, we employed an experimental approach. We used four alternate uses tasks that differed in instruction type (“be fluent” vs. “be creative”) and concurrent secondary workload (load vs. no load). A total of 51 participants (39 female) went through all tasks and generated ideas for a total of 16 different objects; their responses were scored in terms of fluency (number of responses generated), creative quality, and flexibility. We did find, as expected, that the be-creative instruction resulted in fewer and more creative ideas, as well as more flexible idea sets, but neither of the expected interaction effects became significant. Specifically, fluency was not affected more strongly by secondary workload in the be-fluent instruction condition than in the be-creative instruction condition. Further, the performance drop evoked by the secondary workload was not stronger in the be-creative instruction condition compared to the be-fluent instruction condition when creative quality or flexibility were examined as dependent variable. Altogether, our results do not confirm that be-creative instructions involve more cognitive load than be-fluent instructions. Nevertheless, the analysis of the serial order effect and additional correlational examinations revealed some promising results. Methodological limitations which may have influenced the results are discussed in light of the inherent suspense between internal and external validity (i.e., most likely the applied self-paced dual-task approach increased external validity, but undermined internal validity) and potentially guide future research.

Automating creativity assessment with SemDis: An open platform for computing semantic distance

Creativity research requires assessing the quality of ideas and products. In practice, conducting creativity research often involves asking several human raters to judge participants’ responses to creativity tasks, such as judging the novelty of ideas from the alternate uses task (AUT). Although such subjective scoring methods have proved useful, they have two inherent limitations—labor cost (raters typically code thousands of responses) and subjectivity (raters vary on their perceptions and preferences)—raising classic psychometric threats to reliability and validity. We sought to address the limitations of subjective scoring by capitalizing on recent developments in automated scoring of verbal creativity via semantic distance, a computational method that uses natural language processing to quantify the semantic relatedness of texts. In five studies, we compare the top performing semantic models (e.g., GloVe, continuous bag of words) previously shown to have the highest correspondence to human relatedness judgements. We assessed these semantic models in relation to human creativity ratings from a canonical verbal creativity task (AUT; Studies 1–3) and novelty/creativity ratings from two word association tasks (Studies 4–5). We find that a latent semantic distance factor—comprised of the common variance from five semantic models—reliably and strongly predicts human creativity and novelty ratings across a range of creativity tasks. We also replicate an established experimental effect in the creativity literature (i.e., the serial order effect) and show that semantic distance correlates with other creativity measures, demonstrating convergent validity. We provide an open platform to efficiently compute semantic distance, including tutorials and documentation (https://osf.io/gz4fc/).

You may be more original than you think: Predictable biases in self-assessment of originality

How accurate are individuals in judging the originality of their own ideas? Most metacognitive research has focused on well-defined tasks, such as learning, memory, and problem solving, providing limited insight into ill-defined tasks. The present study introduces a novel metacognitive self-judgment of originality, defined as assessments of the uniqueness of an idea in a given context. In three experiments, we examined the reliability, potential biases, and factors affecting originality judgments. Using an ideation task, designed to assess the ability to generate multiple divergent ideas, we show that people accurately acknowledge the serial order effect—judging later ideas as more original than earlier ideas. However, they systematically underestimate their ideas' originality. We employed a manipulation for affecting actual originality level, which did not affect originality judgments, and another one designed to affect originality judgments, which did not affect actual originality performance. This double dissociation between judgments and performance calls for future research to expose additional factors underlying originality judgments.

Predicting response originality through brain activity: An analysis of changes in EEG alpha power during the generation of alternative ideas

Growing neurophysiological evidence points to a role of alpha oscillations in divergent thinking (DT). In particular, studies have shown a consistent EEG alpha synchronization during performance on the Alternative Uses Task (AUT), a well-established DT task. However, there is a need for investigating the brain dynamics underlying the production of a sequence of multiple, alternative ideas at the AUT and their relationship with idea originality. In twenty young adults, we investigated changes in alpha power during performance on a structured version of the AUT, requiring to ideate four alternative uses for conventional objects in distinct and sequentially balanced time periods. Data analysis followed a three-step approach, including behaviour aspects, physiology aspects, and their mutual relationship. At the behavioural level, we observed a typical serial order effect during DT production, with an increase of originality associated with an increase in ideational time and a decrease in response percentage over the four responses. This pattern was paralleled by a shift from alpha desynchronization to alpha synchronization across production of the four alternative ideas. Remarkably, alpha power changes were able to explain response originality, with a differential role of alpha power over different sensor sites. In particular, alpha synchronization over frontal, central, and temporal sites was able to predict the generation of original ideas in the first phases of the DT process, whereas alpha synchronization over centro-parietal sites persistently predicted response originality during the entire DT production. Moreover, a bilateral hemispheric effect in frontal sites and a left-lateralized effect in central, temporal, and parietal sensor sites emerged as predictors of the increase in response originality. These findings highlight the temporal dynamics of DT production across the generation of alternative ideas and support a partially distinct functional role of specific cortical areas during DT.

The proportion and creativity of “old” and “new” ideas: Are they related to fluid intelligence?

The question about the relationship between intellectual and creative abilities still remains unresolved. One potential advance in this area of research could be associated with the use of novel methods of divergent thinking assessment. One of the promising tools for assessment of divergent thinking appears to be the old/new scoring method. This study aimed to investigate the role of fluid intelligence in generating “old” (retrieved from memory) and “new” (generated on the spot) ideas distinguished by the old/new scoring method. Two divergent thinking tasks (Guilford's Alternate Uses for a newspaper and a wooden ruler), which were later scored for creativity (via subjective ratings) and the proportion of new ideas, were administered to 115 university students. Participants then completed three tests of fluid intelligence. Results showed that fluid intelligence correlated weakly with both the proportion and creativity of old and new ideas. However, there was a tendency for a closer association of fluid intelligence with the creativity of new ideas but not old ones. We also replicated the serial order effect showing that new ideas rated by both judges and participants as more creative tend to appear later in a response set. However, we did not find any support for the idea that fluid intelligence moderated the serial order effect. Overall, the application of the old/new scoring method did not reveal any complex relationship between fluid intelligence and the proportion and creativity of old and new ideas.

EEG alpha activity is moderated by the serial order effect during divergent thinking

Prior work has demonstrated that the serial order effect is commonly observed during the Alternative Uses Task, where generated uses become more creative over time while fluency decreases. Yet the neural correlates of the serial order effect are still relatively unexplored. The present study aimed to investigate the electrophysiological correlates underlying this effect. EEG alpha activity was measured using a task-related power paradigm while participants completed both the Alternative Uses Task as well as a Category Fluency Task. The results indicated that left hemisphere alpha power increased relative to right alpha power as a function of the serial order effect in the Alternative Uses Task, but not in the Category Fluency Task. This finding provides evidence that the pattern of observed EEG alpha activity changes over the course of the serial order effect.

Use or Consequences: Probing the Cognitive Difference Between Two Measures of Divergent Thinking.

Recent studies have highlighted both similarities and differences between the cognitive processing that underpins memory retrieval and that which underpins creative thinking. To date, studies have focused more heavily on the Alternative Uses task, but fewer studies have investigated the processing underpinning other idea generation tasks. This study examines both Alternative Uses and Consequences idea generation with a methods pulled from cognitive psychology, and a novel method for evaluating the creativity of such responses. Participants were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk using a custom interface allowing for requisite experimental control. Results showed that both Alternative Uses and Consequences generation are well approximated by an exponential cumulative response time model, consistent with studies of memory retrieval. Participants were also slower to generate their first consequence compared with first responses to Alternative Uses, but inter-response time was negatively related to pairwise similarity on both tasks. Finally, the serial order effect is exhibited for both tasks, with Consequences earning more creative evaluations than Uses. The results have implications for burgeoning neuroscience research on creative thinking, and suggestions are made for future areas of inquiry. In addition, the experimental apparatus described provides an equitable way for researchers to obtain good quality cognitive data for divergent thinking tasks.

Transfer of Learning: What Does It Tell Us About Speech Production Units?

Words, syllables, and phonemes have each been regarded as basic encoding units of speech production in various psycholinguistic models. The present article investigates the role of each unit in the interface with speech articulation, using a paradigm from motor control research. Seventy-six native speakers of French were trained to change their production of /be/ in response to an auditory feedback perturbation (auditory-motor learning). We then assessed the magnitude of learning transfer from /be/ to the syllables in 2 pseudowords (/bepe/ and /pebe/) and 1 real word (/bebe/) as well as the aftereffect on the same utterance (/be/) with a between-subjects design. This made it possible to contrast the amplitude of transfer at the levels of the utterance, the syllable, and the phoneme, depending on the position in the word. Linear mixed models allowed us to study the amplitude as well as the dynamics of the transfer and the aftereffect over trials. Transfer from the training utterance /be/ was observed for all vowels of the test utterances but was larger to the syllable /be/ than to the syllable /pe/ at word-initial position and larger to the 1st syllable than to the 2nd syllable in the utterance. Our study suggests that words, syllables, and phonemes may all contribute to the definition of speech motor commands. In addition, the observation of a serial order effect raises new questions related to the connection between psycholinguistic models and speech motor control approaches.

Mapping associations: exploring divergent thinking through mind mapping

This study is a preliminary inquiry into the structure of mental associations as captured by the Mind Mapping process. Participants generated mind maps around a common central theme. The average frequency occurrence of items mentioned in the maps (i.e., responses) was used as a measure of the response’s relative ‘uniqueness.’ Although the creation of these mind maps was not framed as a Divergent Thinking task, interesting parallels to other Divergent Thinking tasks are reported and compared. This study expands upon the Serial Order Effect by utilizing the tree-graph structure of mind maps to parse out how the depth, breadth, and order of associations relates to uniqueness. The data shows a moderate relationship between order and uniqueness, and a strong relationship between depth and uniqueness. However, higher quantity of deeper responses does not indicate higher average uniqueness of responses. The results suggest that the latent dimensions of depth and breadth are not represented by ‘order’ and are absent in list formats. These results may inform more accurate Divergent Thinking assessments and better tools for aiding an idea generation processes.