Intelligence, creativity, and cognitive control: The common and differential involvement of executive functions in intelligence and creativity

By Mathias Benedek, Emanuel Jauk, M. Sommer, Martin Arendasy, Aljoscha C. Neubauer. Intelligence, 2014

664 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Intelligence and creativity are known to be correlated constructs suggesting that they share a common cognitive basis. The present study assessed three specific executive abilities – updating, shifting, and inhibition – and examined their common and differential relations to fluid intelligence and creativity (i.e., divergent thinking ability) within a latent variable model approach. Additionally, it was tested whether the correlation of fluid intelligence and creativity can be explained by a common executive involvement. As expected, fluid intelligence was strongly predicted by updating, but not by shifting or inhibition. Creativity was predicted by updating and inhibition, but not by shifting. Moreover, updating (and the personality factor openness) was found to explain a relevant part of the shared variance between intelligence and creativity. The findings provide direct support for the executive involvement in creative thought and shed further light on the functional relationship between intelligence and creativity.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bb706685ca52576c9278a5b6a82b45151546f046

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Citations in the corpus

Structure and flexibility: Investigating the relation between the structure of the mental lexicon, fluid intelligence, and creative achievement. (2016, background): “This account argues for the importance of executive functions in the creative process, such as fluid intelligence, retrieval abilities, and cognitive control (Beaty & Silvia, 2012; Benedek et al., 2014; Benedek & Neubauer, 2013; Jauk, Benedek, & Neubauer, 2014; Lee & Therriault, 2013; Nusbaum & Silv”
Automating creativity assessment with SemDis: An open platform for computing semantic distance (2020, background): “Fluid intelligence Past work indicates that fluid intelligence (Gf) — the ability to solve novel problems through reasoning — correlates positively with human creativity ratings on divergent thinking tests (Beaty, Silvia, Nusbaum, Jauk, & Benedek, 2014; Benedek, Jauk, Sommer, Arendasy, & Neubauer, 2”
Assessment of real-life creativity: The Inventory of Creative Activities and Achievements (ICAA). (2017, methodology): “While still being students, they were already highly accomplished as indicated by the number of their own music productions or concerts played (Benedek et al., 2014a).”
Creative Cognition and Brain Network Dynamics (2015, background): “Although memory retrieval appears to have an important role in idea generation, cognitive control systems can also be recruited to evaluate and modify candidate ideas to meet specific goals, in line with behavioural [53–59] and neuroimaging [37,60–64] evidence showing consistent involvement of execu”
How semantic memory structure and intelligence contribute to creative thought: a network science approach (2017, background): “…creative process, such as fluid intelligence, retrieval ability, and specific executive functions (Beaty & Silvia, 2012; Benedek & Neubauer, 2013; Benedek et al., 2014; Groborz & Neçka, 2003; Jauk, Benedek, & Neubauer, 2014; Lee & Therriault, 2013; Nusbaum & Silvia, 2011; Silvia, Beaty, &…”