The Link between working memory capacity and ability to think creatively
View/ Open
peters dissertation.pdf (133.6Kb)
Date
2006Item status
Restricted AccessAuthor
Peters, Laura
Metadata
Abstract
To be capable of thinking creatively, a person must absorb information (such as form,
shape, sound, etc) via one or more of the senses, and then reinterpret this information
to form a novel idea, or an image in their minds. This task requires them to suppress
their initial interpretations of the information that has entered through the senses, and
rework the information into something new. As this task is performed in the mind, it
requires a mental workspace in which the information can be manipulated in order to
produce new ideas (just as an architect would require a drawing board to sketch his
ideas). The study reported in this paper is an investigation into the role of working
memory in supporting, and in constraining, the ability to think creatively.
In order to ascertain whether there was a link between working memory capacity and
ability to think creatively, and also to determine the nature of such a link, a total of
thirty participants (twelve male, eighteen female) were individually presented with
three tests designed to indicate their working memory capacity (namely, sentence
span, digit span, and word span), and then asked to complete a mental synthesis task
comprising of ten trials (devised as a measure of their ability to think creatively) in
which their task was to mentally construct an image from sets of presented
alphanumeric and geometric shape/ characters.
The results of the present study showed that participants’ scores on the tests of
working memory capacity were positively correlated to their scores on the mental
synthesis task. In other words, those participants with greater working memory
capacity seemed to show greater ability to think creatively then those with lower
working memory capacities