Release from (creative) proactive inhibition: Can we manipulate divergent thinking the same as memory?

Abstract

Creative ideation is influenced by spontaneous associative processes and cognitive fixation. Within generating ideas from a similar conceptual (semantic) category, memory retrieval can cause fixation through output interference, leading to fewer novel ideas. However, an incubation interval or new context can facilitate such a memory retrieval process, thus leading to the generation of more novel ideas. Proactive inhibition (PI), a phenomenon rooted in memory research, disrupts the retrieval of new learning due to prior experiences. Release from Proactive Inhibition (RPI) involves a memory rebound when switching between semantic categories, leading to an increase in the semantic distance between responses and the release of semantic inhibitory. While PI has been well-studied in memory research, it has rarely been examined in creativity research. Two experiments were conducted to investigate how PI and RPI influence creative ideation. Experiment 1 explored whether the RPI effect occurs in the Alternate Use Task (AUT), with a control group using the same semantic categories and an experiment group using different semantic categories when generating AUT responses. The results showed that PI inhibited the generation of creative ideas in the control group, while RPI in the experimental group led to an increase in generating original and unique ideas, influencing indicators such as repetitive rate, originality, and uniqueness. Additionally, larger semantic distances of responses from the cue resulted in greater RPI and more original ideas. Experiment 2 manipulated semantic distance across three levels (baseline, close, and remote distance groups) to explore whether the degree of semantic distance influences the amount of RPI in creative ideation. The results indicated that in the remote distance group, RPI affected repetitive rate, originality, and uniqueness, but the magnitude of RPI did not significantly differ between the close and remote distance groups. These findings suggest that the occurrence of RPI offers new insights into the process and theoretical explanation of creative ideation.