부산대학교 도서관

Divergent thinking tasks are often used to assess creativity, or creative potential. The executive (controlled-attention) theory of creativity maintains that higherorder cognitive processes are needed to inhibit the most obvious uses for the object, allowing the individual to generate more novel responses. The aim of the present study was to explore the interaction between two cognitive processes--working memory and intelligence--with respect to divergent thinking. We were specifically interested in the mechanism by which intelligence is related to divergent thinking, and whether it may in part be mediated by individual differences in working memory. Correlation analyses indicated that working memory was associated with scores of flexibility, but not fluency or originality. The degree to which the data fit alternative models of cognitive processes and creativity was tested formally using structural equation modeling. The pattern of findings suggest neither nonverbal intelligence nor working memory have a direct effect on creativity. Rather a model in which either higher-order cognitive skill plays a mediating role provided a good fit to the data. This pattern fits with the view that creative idea generation is a controlled top-down process that involves multiple executive skills, rather than just a single cognitive skill, such as intelligence. Key words: Creativity, Divergent thinking, Intelligence, Working memory
Recent research has focused on creativity as a function of executive processing. This conceptual framework views creative cognition as individual differences in the ability of top-down processes to control attention [...]