The Role Of Transformation Ability In Creative Thinking: The Mediating Effect Of Fluid Intelligence

Creativity is one kind of high cognitive ability possessed exclusively by human beings. It is defined as the ability to raise or develop some work products, which are novel and useful. Executive function (EF) is a goal-directed control mechanism, which could coordinate various complex human cognitive activities. There are three sub components in EF, including inhibition, switching, and memory updating. In conventional studies of creativity, researchers believed that creative thinking is low EF involved and defocused because of their over emphasis on divergent thinking. However, as a high leveled and complex cognitive process, creative thinking must involve some basic cognitive processes, like setting goals. In addition, although many studies showed that fluid intelligence and creativity are two irrelevant abilities, recently researchers have been reconsidering their relationship because of the development of research methods, like the wide use of latent variable analysis.The current study focuses on the relationship between cognitive switching and creative thinking by using latent variable analysis. On the other hand, we also take into account the possible mediating and moderating effect of fluid intelligence in the relationship between cognitive switching and creative thinking.104participants attended this study. They were given measurements of creative thinking, cognitive switching and fluid intelligence. The results showed that the path coefficients through cognitive switching and fluid intelligence to creative thinking were significant. Cognitive switching had a significant influence on the quantity aspect of creative thinking, while fluid intelligence had a significant influence on the quality aspect of creative thinking. There was a significant mediating effect of fluid intelligence in the relationship between cognitive switching and creative thinking, but the moderating effect was not significant. The conclusions were as follows:creative thinking is high EF involved; cognitive switching could facilitate the process of stopping thinking in one particular conceptual category and switching into another category; fluid intelligence would mediate the process of creative thinking through setting goals, providing logic, and invoking existed knowledge.The history of researching on the relationship between EF, particularly cognitive switching, and creative thinking is very short. If the positive link between cognitive switching and creative thinking could be confirmed, it would be very useful in practical education. Future studies could use some methods from cognitive neuroscience, like event-related potentials and functional MRI technique to further figure out the relationship between executive function and creative thinking and its mechanism.