Rodriguez-Boerwinkle Rebekah M, Welhaf Matthew S, Smeekens Bridget A, Booth Rachel A, Kwapil Thomas R, Silvia Paul J, Kane Michael J
University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Creat Res J. 2024 Mar 26. doi: 10.1080/10400419.2024.2326336.
Individual differences in executive functions (or executive control abilities) predict variation in creative thinking ability. Relatedly, propensity for mind-wandering-or task unrelated thought-has been gaining attention among creativity scholars, but its effects on creativity remain unclear. The present study conceptually replicates and extends recent laboratory and experience-sampling work to assess the links between individual differences in divergent thinking, executive control abilities (working memory capacity and attention control), and measures of mind-wandering collected in both contexts. SEM analyses indicated that executive control factors weakly predicted divergent thinking scores, mainly due to their role in filtering out uncreative ideas rather than generating highly novel ones. Lab-based measures of mind-wandering didn't significantly correlate with overall creative thinking, challenging the idea that mind-wandering uniformly enhances creativity, but they were positively linked to highly creative divergent thinking scores. Daily-life measures of mind-wandering, meanwhile, did not provide stronger predictive insights into creative thinking than lab measures. Finally, exploratory analyses found that divergent thinking scores based on highly creative responses were positively associated with episodes of more fantastical, unrealistic mind-wandering, or "daydreaming." We end our investigation with a call for greater theoretical precision and some hypotheses to guide future work. [Data, scripts, and preprint: https://osf.io/at5gx/].
执行功能（或执行控制能力）的个体差异可预测创造性思维能力的变化。与此相关的是，走神倾向——即与任务无关的思维——在创造力学者中越来越受到关注，但其对创造力的影响仍不明确。本研究从概念上重复并扩展了最近的实验室研究和经验抽样研究，以评估发散性思维的个体差异、执行控制能力（工作记忆容量和注意力控制）以及在这两种情况下收集的走神测量指标之间的联系。结构方程模型分析表明，执行控制因素对发散性思维分数的预测作用较弱，主要是因为它们在过滤掉无创造性的想法而非产生高度新颖的想法方面所起的作用。基于实验室的走神测量指标与整体创造性思维没有显著相关性，这对走神能统一提高创造力的观点提出了挑战，但它们与高度创造性的发散性思维分数呈正相关。与此同时，日常生活中的走神测量指标对创造性思维的预测洞察力并不比实验室测量指标更强。最后，探索性分析发现，基于高度创造性反应的发散性思维分数与更奇幻、不现实的走神或“白日梦”情节呈正相关。我们以呼吁提高理论精确性和提出一些指导未来工作的假设来结束我们的调查。[数据、脚本和预印本：https://osf.io/at5gx/]
