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

ABSTRACT: 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; however, the generalizability of these results to other populations and tasks is unknown. In the present experiments, we examined whether the effects of an episodic specificity induction would 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, as compared with a control induction not requiring specific episodic retrieval; per

SUBMITTER: Madore KP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4975991 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature