Vaisarova Julie, Carlson Stephanie M
Corresponding Author. Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, 51 East River Road, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, 51 East River Road, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
Trends Neurosci Educ. 2021 Dec;25:100161. doi: 10.1016/j.tine.2021.100161. Epub 2021 Sep 15.
Research with adults suggests that executive function (EF) might play a role in the development of divergent thinking, a key component of creativity, by helping children override canonical knowledge.
We examined this possibility in two experiments, by manipulating the familiarity of objects used in the Alternate Uses test of divergent thinking both between-participants (Experiment 1: N = 53 4-year-olds and 50 6-year-olds) and within-participants (Experiment 2: N = 74 5-year-olds).
We found evidence that younger children generated more and/or more original ideas for novel than familiar objects. However, this effect disappeared with age and did not depend on child EF. Further, EF was inversely associated with divergent thinking, controlling for age, intelligence, and income.
These results call into question a simple executive account of children's divergent thinking and suggest that, among predominantly White, socioeconomically advantaged 4-6-year-olds, divergent idea-generation might be a primarily bottom-up process that can be hindered by top-down thinking.
针对成年人的研究表明，执行功能（EF）可能通过帮助儿童超越规范知识，在发散性思维（创造力的关键组成部分）的发展中发挥作用。
我们在两项实验中检验了这种可能性，通过在参与者之间（实验1：53名4岁儿童和50名6岁儿童）以及参与者内部（实验2：74名5岁儿童）操纵用于发散性思维替代用途测试的物体的熟悉程度。
我们发现有证据表明，年幼儿童针对新颖物体比熟悉物体产生了更多和/或更具原创性的想法。然而，这种效应随着年龄增长而消失，并且不依赖于儿童的执行功能。此外，在控制了年龄、智力和收入后，执行功能与发散性思维呈负相关。
这些结果对关于儿童发散性思维的简单执行功能解释提出了质疑，并表明，在主要为白人、社会经济条件优越的4至6岁儿童中，发散性想法的产生可能主要是一个自下而上的过程，可能会受到自上而下思维的阻碍。
