Hass Richard W
College of Science, Health, and the Liberal Arts, Philadelphia University, Philadelphia, PA 19144, United States.
Cognition. 2017 Sep;166:344-357. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2017.05.039. Epub 2017 Jun 7.
Divergent thinking, as a method of examining creative cognition, has not been adequately analyzed in the context of modern cognitive theories. This article casts divergent thinking responding in the context of theories of memory search. First, it was argued that divergent thinking tasks are similar to semantic fluency tasks, but are more constrained, and less well structured. Next, response time distributions from 54 participants were analyzed for temporal and semantic clustering. Participants responded to two prompts from the alternative uses test: uses for a brick and uses for a bottle, for two minutes each. Participants' cumulative response curves were negatively accelerating, in line with theories of search of associative memory. However, results of analyses of semantic and temporal clustering suggested that clustering is less evident in alternative uses responding compared to semantic fluency tasks. This suggests either that divergent thinking responding does not involve an exhaustive search through a clustered memory trace, but rather that the process is more exploratory, yielding fewer overall responses that tend to drift away from close associates of the divergent thinking prompt.
发散性思维作为一种考察创造性认知的方法，在现代认知理论的背景下尚未得到充分分析。本文在记忆搜索理论的背景下对发散性思维反应进行了探讨。首先，有人认为发散性思维任务类似于语义流畅性任务，但受到更多限制，结构也更不完善。接下来，对54名参与者的反应时间分布进行了时间和语义聚类分析。参与者对替代用途测试中的两个提示做出反应：砖头的用途和瓶子的用途，每个提示反应两分钟。参与者的累积反应曲线呈负加速，这与联想记忆搜索理论一致。然而，语义和时间聚类分析结果表明，与语义流畅性任务相比，替代用途反应中的聚类不太明显。这表明要么发散性思维反应不涉及对聚类记忆痕迹的详尽搜索，要么该过程更具探索性，产生的总体反应较少，且往往会偏离发散性思维提示的紧密关联。
