Event.

Psychonomics Society Annual Meeting 2019

Abstract.

Simonton (1984) proposed that creativity as defined by career productivity increases from younger to middle adulthood – peaking at 42 years of age and then decreasing (i.e., a quadratic effect of creativity). This model is based on a number of factors (although chance-configuration theory – see Simonton, 1997 – emphasizes processing speed, illustrated in Figure 1 using the solid line). We hypothesize that creative productivity is the inverse effect of inhibitory control (i.e., top-down attention control has a negative effect on creativity in this alternative model; see Figure 1 – dotted line). One concern using career productivity as one’s measure of creativity (as Simonton did) is that it does not look at creative potential—but rather creative accomplishments (e.g., the number of peer-reviewed journal articles). However, this approach is confounded with other variables such as the “service load” across academic careers (which tends to increase with chronological age) and the number of research fields in which faculty members are involved (e.g., I may begin my career studying episodic memory, switch to divided attention, and then study how individual differences affect divided attention—each new specialty would open up many new potential projects). We attempted to avoid such problems by using a cross-sectional design to test participants aged 18-54 years on objective tests of creativity: the Torrence Tests of Creative Thinking-Verbal (TTCT) and the Ruff Figural Fluency Test (RFFT).

Contributors.

Philip A. Allen, Kathy Lamancusa, James R. Houston, Michelle L. Hughes, Mei-Ching Lien