A Study On The Correlation Between Working Memory Span And Creative Thinking

To investigate the relationship between working memory span and creative thinking, 109 sophomore students were recruited to take part in working memory experiments and creative thinking test. The indicators of working memory include spatial working memory span(SWMS) and verbal working memory span(VWMS),and those of creative thinking include fluency, flexibility, total originality, total creativity, verbal originality, figural originality ,verbal creativity and figural creativity. The results indicate that, (1) SWMS and VWMS are correlated with various indicators of creative thinking in different degree, but the correlation between SWMS and indicators of creative thinking is more universal and closer than that between VWMS and creative thinking indicators, as the creative indicators and their coefficients correlated with SWMS are more and closer than those with VWMS.(2) SWMS is inclined to positively correlate with the figural indicators but negatively correlate with the verbal indicators of creative thinking. However, VWMS is inclined to positively correlate with the verbal indicators but negatively correlate with the figural indicators of creative thinking. This show that the correlation between working memory span and creativity are probably domain-dependent and domain-tensioned. (3) The higher SWMS students gain better performance in flexibility, figural originality and figural creativity but worse performance in verbal originality and verbal creativity than the lower SWMS students, other creative indicators scores are not significantly different between the two groups. (4) The fluency, verbal originality and verbal creativity of the higher VWMS students are significantly higher than the lower VWMS students(the verbal creativity difference between the two group is very close to the significant level, p=0.052) ,but the other creative indicators do not exist significant difference between the two group students.