Divergent thinking: Strategies and executive involvement in generating novel uses for familiar objects

Although the Alternative Uses divergent thinking task has been widely used in psychometric and experimental studies of creativity, the cognitive processes underlying this task have not been examined in detail before the two studies are reported here. In Experiment 1, a verbal protocol analysis study of the Alternative Uses task was carried out with a Think aloud group (N=40) and a Silent control group (N=64). The groups did not differ in fluency or novelty of idea production indicating no verbal overshadowing. Analysis of protocols from the Think aloud group suggested that initial responses were based on a strategy of Retrieval from long-term memory of pre-known uses. Later responses tended to be based on a…