Alternate Uses

Guilford, J. P.; Christensen, P. R.; Merrifield, Philip R.; Wilson, Robert C.

doi:10.1037/t06443-000

Cited by 95 publications

(130 citation statements)

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“…Participants completed one practice cue for each task, followed by the main experimental trials (i.e., 5 for the AUT and OAT, and 4 for Imagination). The cues were common, everyday objects (e.g., newspaper, bed sheet, eye glasses) contained in the official test booklet for the AUT (Guilford, Christensen, Merrifield, & Wilson, 1960) and current studies of divergent thinking. The order of the tasks was blocked (e.g., OATAUT-Imagination) to reduce cognitive load, and these blocked sequences were presented in a random order to participants; the order of object cues was also randomized.…”

Section: Experiments 1 Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The AUT is a typical index of divergent thinking that requires combining different types of information in novel and flexible ways (e.g., Guilford, 1967; Guilford et al, 1960), and that involves episodic imagery (e.g., Addis et al, 2016; Madore et al, 2015). Participants were asked to report as many unusual and creative uses for each object cue as possible.…”

Section: Experiments 1 Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Divergent creative thinking in young and older adults: Extending the effects of an episodic specificity induction

2016

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Recent research has suggested that an episodic specificity induction- brief training in recollecting the details of a past experience- enhances divergent creative thinking on the Alternate Uses Task (AUT) in young adults without affecting performance on tasks thought to involve little divergent thinking, but the generalizability of these results to other populations and tasks is unknown. The present experiments examined whether effects of an episodic specificity induction extend to older adults and a different index of divergent thinking, the Consequences Task. In Experiment 1, the specificity induction significantly enhanced divergent thinking on the AUT in both young and older adults compared with a control induction not requiring specific episodic retrieval; performance on a task involving little divergent thinking did not vary as a function of induction (generating associates for common objects). No overall age-related differences were observed on either task. In Experiment 2, the specificity induction significantly enhanced divergent thinking (generating consequences of novel scenarios) in young adults compared with another control induction not requiring episodic retrieval. To examine the types of creative ideas affected by the induction, participants in both experiments also labeled each of their divergent thinking responses as an old idea from memory or new idea from imagination. New and to some extent old ideas were significantly boosted following the specificity induction compared with the control. These experiments provide novel evidence that an episodic specificity induction can boost divergent thinking in young and older adults, and indicate that episodic memory is involved in multiple divergent thinking tasks.

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Section: Experiments 1 Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Experiments 1 Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Divergent creative thinking in young and older adults: Extending the effects of an episodic specificity induction

2016

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“…Seventeen different object cues appeared in each session. The cues were everyday objects (e.g., newspaper, bed sheet, eye glasses) that are used in the official test booklet for the AUT (e.g., Guilford, Christensen, Merrifield, & Wilson, 1960) and other studies on divergent thinking. Before completing each task, participants responded to a practice cue to ensure that they understood the instructions and response interface.…”

Section: Experiments 1 Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Creativity and Memory

2015

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After receiving an episodic specificity induction - brief training in recollecting details of a recent event - people produce more episodic details when imagining future events and solving means-end problems than after receiving a control induction not focused on episodic retrieval. Here we show for the first time that an episodic specificity induction also enhances divergent creative thinking. In Experiment 1, participants exhibited a selective boost on a divergent thinking task that involves generating unusual uses of common objects after a specificity induction compared with a control induction; by contrast, performance was similar on an object association task thought to involve little divergent thinking. In Experiment 2, we replicated the specificity induction effect on divergent thinking using a different control induction, and also found that participants performed similarly on a convergent thinking task following both inductions. These experiments provide novel evidence that episodic memory is involved in divergent creative thinking.

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“…This is intuitively similar to Neckercube reversal. On the other hand, Wiseman et al (2011) measured creativity by asking participants to think of alternative uses for a brick or a paperclip (Guilford et al 1978). This can be thought of as seeing a new meaning (use) for objects, and performance was associated with their measure of ease of reversal of Jastrow's classic duck-rabbit figure.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Creativity, Ambiguous Figures, and Academic Preference

Doherty

Mair

2012

Perception

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Abstract. Research suggests that ambiguous figure reversal is associated with creativity, but current evidence relies on subjective self-report that is difficult to quantify (Wiseman, Watt, Gilhooly, Georgiou, 2011 British Journal of Psychology 102 615-622). Using quantifiable measures of both phenomena we confirm this claim. We also find that participants studying science experience much more frequent reversal-a novel and intriguing finding.Keywords: ambiguous figure reversal, creativity, academic preference IntroductionRecently Wiseman et al (2011) presented evidence for a relationship between creativity and ease of reversal of an ambiguous figure. As they note, this conclusion is limited by their self-report measure: participants were shown an ambiguous figure and asked to rate how easy they found it to see the opposite interpretation. Most participants rated this as easy or very easy (95% in study 1, 85% in study 2), suggesting that they had no baseline against which to judge their relative reversal ability. Individual differences therefore might reflect factors like self-confidence rather than reversal ability. We replicate the finding using quantifiable measures of reversal. We also extend the work by using more than one type of ambiguous figure. Ambiguous figures fall into three distinct categories, in which reversal is of figure and ground, content, or perspective (Long and Toppino 2004). See figure 1 for exemplars.

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Alternate Uses

Cited by 95 publications

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Divergent creative thinking in young and older adults: Extending the effects of an episodic specificity induction

Divergent creative thinking in young and older adults: Extending the effects of an episodic specificity induction

Creativity and Memory

Creativity, Ambiguous Figures, and Academic Preference

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