Relations of creative responses to working time and instructions.

Abstract

This study explored relationships between the number of responses produced and the successive increments of time in which the responses were produced, for several creative-thinking tests. Other dimensions explored in relation to time were 3 aspects of originality cleverness, uncommonness, and remoteness. In the case of cleverness, the effects of instructions to be clever were also studied. Regarding quantity of responses produced, there is a decrease in rate with time for simple recall tasks but relatively constant rate for more inventive tasks. Two of the 3 aspects of originality, uncommonness and remoteness, increased with time. Instructions to be clever appeared to decrease the total number of responses produced but to increase the total number of clever responses and the average degree of cleverness. Implications for the measurement of the traits of fluency and originality are indicated.