Cargando…
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. “...
Autores principales: | , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2021
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7838919/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33430304 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence9010003 |
_version_ | 1783643291155169280 |
---|---|
author | Kleinkorres, Ruben Forthmann, Boris Holling, Heinz |
author_facet | Kleinkorres, Ruben Forthmann, Boris Holling, Heinz |
author_sort | Kleinkorres, Ruben |
collection | PubMed |
description | 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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7838919 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-78389192021-01-28 An Experimental Approach to Investigate the Involvement of Cognitive Load in Divergent Thinking Kleinkorres, Ruben Forthmann, Boris Holling, Heinz J Intell Article 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. MDPI 2021-01-07 /pmc/articles/PMC7838919/ /pubmed/33430304 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence9010003 Text en © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Kleinkorres, Ruben Forthmann, Boris Holling, Heinz An Experimental Approach to Investigate the Involvement of Cognitive Load in Divergent Thinking |
title | An Experimental Approach to Investigate the Involvement of Cognitive Load in Divergent Thinking |
title_full | An Experimental Approach to Investigate the Involvement of Cognitive Load in Divergent Thinking |
title_fullStr | An Experimental Approach to Investigate the Involvement of Cognitive Load in Divergent Thinking |
title_full_unstemmed | An Experimental Approach to Investigate the Involvement of Cognitive Load in Divergent Thinking |
title_short | An Experimental Approach to Investigate the Involvement of Cognitive Load in Divergent Thinking |
title_sort | experimental approach to investigate the involvement of cognitive load in divergent thinking |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7838919/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33430304 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence9010003 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT kleinkorresruben anexperimentalapproachtoinvestigatetheinvolvementofcognitiveloadindivergentthinking AT forthmannboris anexperimentalapproachtoinvestigatetheinvolvementofcognitiveloadindivergentthinking AT hollingheinz anexperimentalapproachtoinvestigatetheinvolvementofcognitiveloadindivergentthinking AT kleinkorresruben experimentalapproachtoinvestigatetheinvolvementofcognitiveloadindivergentthinking AT forthmannboris experimentalapproachtoinvestigatetheinvolvementofcognitiveloadindivergentthinking AT hollingheinz experimentalapproachtoinvestigatetheinvolvementofcognitiveloadindivergentthinking |