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. “...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Kleinkorres, Ruben, Forthmann, Boris, Holling, Heinz
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