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

Autor/inn/en	Kleinkorres, Ruben; Forthmann, Boris; Holling, Heinz
Titel	An Experimental Approach to Investigate the Involvement of Cognitive Load in Divergent Thinking
Quelle	In: Journal of Intelligence, 9 (2021), Artikel 3 (26 Seiten) PDF als Volltext kostenfreie Datei Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Forthmann, Boris) ORCID (Holling, Heinz)
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	2079-3200
Schlagwörter	Difficulty Level; Creative Thinking; Creativity; Correlation; Brainstorming; Task Analysis; Experiments; Undergraduate Students; Adults + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Schwierigkeitsgrad; Kreatives Denken; Kreativität; Korrelation; Aufgabenanalyse; Erprobung
Abstract	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. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2022/1/01