Divergent Thinking about Objects in the Grasslands of Curiosity.

Abstract

The current study investigates if and how curiosity can influence divergent thinking about objects when processing information for survival relevance. A total of thirty-six participants were asked to complete alternative use tasks (AUT) scenarios, generate uses of an object with regards to the four scenarios and complete a surprise recall task. The four AUT scenarios were selected based on their curiosity level which was determined by an online survey; there were two curious and two non-curious scenarios. The recall performance and the problem focus of each scenario were studied as exploratory variables. Post-test measures showed an association between curiosity and divergent thinking as well as survival and divergent thinking; however, no effect of the problem-focus upon divergent thinking. Furthermore, neither curiosity, problem focus nor survival contexts influenced the recall performance. The methodological limitations are discussed along with possible explanations for the obtained results; a suggestion of other proximate mechanisms and future research directions are also given. Keywords: Adaptive Memory, Survival Processing, Divergent Thinking, Curiosity, Information Seeking, Problem focus