The Effect Of Working Memory On Creative Thinking

In this research, we explored the influence of working memory on two different verbal creativity tasks (divergent thinking; convergent thinking), and its internal mechanism. In study 1, we adopt latent variable modeling to construct the model of the relationship between working memory and creative thinking. Study 2 applied dual-task paradigm and manipulate participant’s available mental resources to compare the different impact of working memory on the two creative thinking task. In study 3, through manipulating working memory load during the creative task with no time pressure, we want to further explore relationship between the working memory and divergent thinking task.In study 1, according to the execution control theory of creative thinking and the nature of execution system of working memory, we assume that working memory capacity and the 3 executive functions can impact the two types of creative thinking (divergent thinking and convergent thinking). We took a psychometrics approach which involved 8 working memory tasks and 6 creative thinking tasks, and then we adopt latent variable modeling to construct the relationship model between working memory and creative thinking.we found that working memory has influence on the convergent thinking task but not on the divergent thinking task, and the influence mechanism is related to updating function.On the basis of study 1, study 2 wanted to provide further evidence that working memory has different effects on two types of verbal creative tasks through experiment controls. We adopted a dual-task paradigm, which means participants should do divergent thinking task or convergent thinking tasks and working memory load task at the same time. We found that for convergent thinking task, working memory load had main effect, subjects with high working memory load performed better than those with low working memory load; working memory capacity had main effect, performance of subjects with high capacity of working memory was superior to that of those with low working memory capacity; the working memory load and working memory capacity had no interaction effect. For divergent thinking task, working memory load, working memory capacity had no main effect to fluency and originality indicators of creativity. Experiment 2 support the findings of experiment 1, namely working memory have impact on convergent thinking task but not divergent thinking task.Execution control theory of creativity and Dual Pathway to Creativity Model both advocate working memory play an important role in divergent thinking; while our experiment 1 and 2 found that working memory have no influence on divergent thinking. We think it’s probably because subjects were asked to complete the task in short time, which limits working memory to play its full part. Therefore, in experiment 3, we asked participants to do the divergent thinking task without time limitation. By manipulating working memory load when during completing the creative task, we want to provide further evidence that there is a relationship between the working memory and divergent thinking task in study 3. We had three groups between participants, one group report 3 unusual use at one time; one group report 1 unusual use at one time and one group write down unusual on paper, each of which represented the high, medium, and low WM load. Participants were randomly arranged to one of three WM load conditions to complete divergent creative thinking task. We found working memory load have main effect, specifically,1 unusual use group and write down unusual use group performed better than 3 unusual use report group in divergent thinking task; performance of 1 unusual use report group was same as write down unusual use group. The results show that effect of working memory on divergent thinking is conditional, that is to say, working memory has impact on divergent thinking task, but unlike convergent thinking, it needs long time before it’s impact emerge.We concluded that working memory has influence on convergent thinking, its role can be realized through the updating function of executive function. Working memory also have impacts on divergent thinking, but it act only in high working memory demand situation. Theoretically, this study supports the execution control theory of creativity and Dual Pathway to Creativity Model; in practice, this study also solves a methodological problem, which means that oral report didn’t underestimate the creative level of subjects, compared with write down the answer on the paper.