Thinking Skills and Creativity 9 (2013) 96–106
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Thinking Skills and Creativity
journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/tsc
Different attentional traits, different creativities
Wei-Lun Lin a , Kung-Yu Hsu b,∗ , Hsueh-Chih Chen c , Wan-yun Chang d
a
Department of Psychology, Fo Guang University, No. 160, Linwei Rd., Jiaosi Shiang, Yilan County 26247, Taiwan
Department of Psychology, National Chung Cheng University, No. 168, University Rd., Minhsiung Township, Chiayi County 62102,
Taiwan
c
Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling, National Taiwan Normal University, No. 162, Sec. 1, Heping E. Rd., Taipei City
10610, Taiwan
d
General Education Center, National Taiwan University of Arts, No. 59, Sec. 1, Ta-kuan Rd., Panchiao, Taipei, Taiwan
b
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 1 February 2012
Received in revised form
18 September 2012
Accepted 11 October 2012
Available online 16 November 2012
Keywords:
Effortful control
Orienting sensitivity
Divergent thinking
Insight problem-solving
a b s t r a c t
This study examines the relationships between two aspects of “breadth of attention” (orienting sensitivity and effortful control) and two forms of creativity (divergent thinking
and insight problem-solving). It suggests that the two forms of creativity relate differently
to the two modes of attention. This distinction has not been made in previous studies.
Intelligence and other personality traits were also assessed as control variables. Over 300
participants’ responses to the Adult Temperament Questionnaire, the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults, insight-problem tasks, the HEXACO Personality Inventory, and Raven’s
Advanced Progressive Matrices were collected. The results showed that, after the effects
of intelligence scores and personality traits were controlled for, individuals’ performance
on insight problem-solving was predicted only by orienting sensitivity, while effortful
control could only predicted divergent thinking performance. The relationships between
attentional traits and creative performances were discussed.
© 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
The breadth of attention trait has been proposed as a characteristic of creative individuals. For example, the biographies and
personal anecdotes of many eminent creators have revealed that they were sensitive to environmental stimuli such as noise
(for a review, see Kasof, 1997). Moreover, research studies have found that highly creative individuals had more intrusion
errors on dichotic listening tasks (Dykes & McGhie, 1976), and they tended to describe themselves as more “distractible”
(Domino, 1970) than did those with low creativity. It was suggested that this wide breadth of attention enables creative
individuals to attend to more concepts at a given time, increasing the likelihood of novel and appropriate combinations (e.g.,
Martindale, 1999; Mendelsohn, 1976). However, various measures of attentional breadth and creative performance have
been adopted, indicating that different constructs or processes might be involved in those measurements and that different
relationships might exist between breadth of attention and creative performance in relation to these distinct conceptions. The
present study aims to explore this issue by specifying two constructs of attention in the Adult Temperament Questionnaire
(ATQ; Evans & Rothbart, 2007) that might contribute to breadth of attention, as well as two measures of creative performance
that, it has been suggested, involve different processes (Lin & Lien, in press); subsequently, the study explores how these
specific constructs/measures might interact.
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +886 5 2720411x32214; fax: +886 5 2720857.
E-mail address: [email protected] (K.-Y. Hsu).
1871-1871/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2012.10.002
W.-L. Lin et al. / Thinking Skills and Creativity 9 (2013) 96–106
97
1.1. Constructs of breadth of attention
Breadth of attention generally refers to the number and range of stimuli that an individual can attend to at any one
time (Kasof, 1997; Mendelsohn, 1976). This construct can be empirically assessed by various measures when investigating
its relationship with creativity. Some researchers (Domino, 1970; Kasof, 1997) have used self-reported questionnaires to
assess this breadth of attention trait in individuals by using descriptors such as “I am tremendously affected by sudden loud
noises” (quoted from Kasof, 1997). It was found that the breadth of attention trait in individuals was positively correlated
to their creative performance. Other studies utilized different cognitive tasks. For example, Mendelsohn (1976) used a cue
utilization paradigm in which the irrelevant peripheral cues later became the targets to attend to (see also Ansburg & Hill,
2003). Individuals were asked to focus on visually presented items while another list of to-be-ignored items was presented
acoustically as background noise. Some words from both lists were the solutions to the anagram tasks presented later. It was
found that highly creative individuals utilized both focal and peripheral cues more efficiently and solved more anagrams
than individuals with low creativity, indicating that the former may have possessed a wider breadth of attention and larger
attentional resources (e.g., Ansburg & Hill, 2003; Mendelsohn, 1976). On the other hand, increased attentional breadth
was considered to reflect a decreased inhibitory process in which irrelevant task distractions were not properly filtered or
inhibited, enabling participants to attend to more peripheral stimuli (Eysenck, 1995; Friedman & Miyake, 2004). For example,
researchers (Rowe, Hirsh, & Anderson, 2007) adopted the flanker task, in which individuals were asked to respond quickly
and correctly to central stimuli that were presented coupled with irrelevant peripheral stimuli (e.g., NNHNN). It was found
that highly creative individuals could not inhibit peripheral cues properly and responded more slowly to the targets when
distracters were incompatible with it.
Given that various measures have been used to assess individuals’ breadth of attention, we consider that different facets
of attention should be further distinguished. For examples, one of the key differences between the cognitive tasks described
above is whether the performance of the main task is hindered while a participant attends to peripheral stimuli. While some
can nicely attend to and process both central and peripheral information, others are attracted to peripheral distractors and
process the target less effectively. In the domain of questionnaire assessment, similar differentiations could also be made.
1.1.1. Orienting sensitivity versus effortful control
In the Adult Temperament Questionnaire, Evans and Rothbart (2007) differentiate orienting sensitivity and effortful control
as two attentional constructs. Following Rothbart’s framework of temperament (Rothbart, Derryberry, & Posner, 1994), Evans
and Rothbart (2007) defined orienting sensitivity as awareness of a neutral or emotional stimulation of low intensity originating from the surroundings, or a spontaneous idea not directly related to an association with the surrounding environment.
Further, according to Evans and Rothbart (2007) orienting sensitivity consists of three constructs: (1) general-perceptual
sensitivity (for example, “I usually notice visual details in the environment,” p. 885); (2) affective-perceptual sensitivity (for
example, “I am always aware of how the weather seems to affect my mood,” p. 884); and (3) associative sensitivity (for
example, “When I am resting with my eyes closed, I sometimes see visual images.,” p. 885). Various researchers (Evans &
Rothbart, 2007; Komsi et al., 2010; Wiltink, Vogelsang, & Beutel, 2006) have shown that orienting sensitivity is strongly
related to openness/intellect in the five-factor framework. Evans and Rothbart (2007) argued that orienting sensitivity could
be the substrate of the openness/intellect in a framework of personality development. However, in the framework of creativity, which concerns this study, orienting sensitivity could include other cognitive characteristics. Based on his review,
Feist (1998) differentiated two cognitive traits: open and imaginative and open and flexible. Nusbaum and Silvia (2011) distinguished intellect from openness and found that openness is related to creativity, and intellect is associated with fluid
intelligence. Orienting sensitivity reflects individuals’ broadly attending to low intensity and peripheral cues, possibly due
to having more resources available, as suggested by the cue utilization paradigm (e.g., Ansburg & Hill, 2003; Mendelsohn,
1976), leading people be flexible and open to new perspectives or ideas.
Meanwhile, effortful control was defined as a set of regulatory processes to inhibit dominant (but inappropriate) responses,
to perform subdominant (but avoidant) behaviors, and to control attention (Evans & Rothbart, 2007). It also consisted of three
constructs, according to Evans and Rothbart (2007): activation control (for example, “I hardly ever finish things on time,”
coded in reverse); attention control (for example, “When interrupted or distracted, I usually can easily shift my attention
back to whatever I was doing before,”); and inhibitory control (for example, “It is easy for me to hold back my laughter in a
situation where it is not appropriate,” p. 884). Effortful control is considered to be based on executive attention, which serves
the functions of error detection, inhibition, and conflict resolution for emotional and cognitive control (Posner & Rothbart,
2007; Rueda, Posner, & Rothbart, 2005). Some evidence has supported the connection between effortful control and conflict
resolution, response inhibition or error detection in different cognitive tasks across different age groups (Jones, Rothbart, &
Posner, 2003; Posner & Rothbart, 2010; Zabelina & Robinson, 2010). For example, Kanske and Kotz (2012) found that adults
with high effortful control could quickly resolve the conflict in the flanker task and Simon task. In relation to the discussion
on attentional breadth mentioned above, the notion that wider breadth of attention is represented by lower inhibition with
regard to peripheral stimuli may possibly be reflected by lower effortful control (inhibitory control, in particular), as evident
by highly creative individuals’ low inhibition to peripheral cues in the flanker task (Rowe et al., 2007).
Orienting sensitivity and effortful control were proposed in studies of adult temperament only recently. Past researches
(Rothbart & Bates, 2006) have investigated effortful control in various domains of child development, but its effects on adult
life are little known. The effects of orienting sensitivity as well have been seldom studied. Furthermore, no previous study
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W.-L. Lin et al. / Thinking Skills and Creativity 9 (2013) 96–106
has inspected the relationships of these two types of attention with creative performance. The present study aims to assess
individuals’ orienting sensitivity and effortful control to empirically investigate the relationships between these two facets
of attentional breadth and creativity.
1.2. Different measures of creative performance
Researchers have used either divergent thinking tests or insight problem tasks to measure individuals’ creative potential
with respect to the “psychometric approach” and the “cognitive approach” in the creativity literature (Sternberg, Lubart,
Kaufman, & Pretz, 2005). Divergent thinking ability was referred to as generating many responses to a given question
(Guilford, 1956), measured by fluency, originality, and flexibility indices in a divergent thinking test (e.g., Torrance, 1966;
Wallach & Kogan, 1965). An insight problem was one that exhibited those properties with regard to which problem-solvers
usually encountered obstacles at first and invent a sudden “aha!” solution later (e.g., Dominowski, 1995; Ohlsson, 1984).
This kind of problem was considered a productive problem because it could not be solved using existing rules; rather, a
reconstruction of the problem representation was required for success (Weisberg, 1995). The accuracy rates of solving
insight problems were used as an index of creative ability.
As Wakefield (1989) pointed out, the divergent thinking test was a well-defined, open-solution problem, and an insight
problem was an ill-defined, closed-solution one; researchers (Lin, Lien, & Jen, 2005) have identified the different task demands
of these two measures with respect to the requirement of novelty and appropriateness. Empirical evidence also showed that
performance on the two tasks was not correlated in the same individuals (e.g., Lin et al., 2005) and that various factors
correlated differently to these two measures. For example, intelligence was found to be more positively correlated to insight
problem-solving than to divergent thinking performance (for a review, see Sternberg et al., 2005). Individuals with better
divergent thinking performance were found to exhibit lower cognitive inhibition ability than controls, while individuals with
better insight problem-solving performance did not (Lin, 2006). In addition, some big-five personality traits—for example,
openness to experience—correlated positively to divergent thinking performance, while emotionality was found negatively
correlated to insight problem-solving (Lin, Hsu, Chen, & Wang, 2012). These results suggest that different processes might
be involved in divergent thinking and insight problem-solving performance.
1.3. Relationships between different attentional constructs and creative performance
With respect to the different operational definitions of attentional breadth as well as the different processes involved in
divergent thinking and insight problem-solving, we hypothesized that orienting sensitivity and effortful control exhibit different relationships with the two creativity measures. If orienting sensitivity could reflect both individuals’ broadly attending to
peripheral cues and freely associating different ideas, it was predicted to correlate with individuals’ insight problem-solving
performance and divergent thinking. However, given the relationships between orienting sensitivity and openness as well as
between openness and divergent thinking, the effects of orienting sensitivity on the performance of divergent thinking should
vanish when the effects of openness on divergent thinking are predicted in advance. On the other hand, if effortful control
(inhibitory control in particular) reflected cognitive inhibition abilities, individuals with good divergent thinking performance
might exhibit lower effortful control, considering that previous studies suggesting negative correlations between cognitive
inhibition and creativity have used mostly divergent thinking measurements (e.g., Eysenck, 1995; Lin, 2006).1
In the present study, we thus use ATQ to measure participants’ orienting sensitivity to examine our hypotheses. We also
measured personality traits and intelligence as control variables. As mentioned previously, research has revealed overlaps
between constructs of attentional temperament and personality variables. For example, orienting sensitivity is found to
be related to openness/intellect in the five-factor framework (Evans & Rothbart, 2007; Komsi et al., 2010; Wiltink et al.,
2006). In addition, personality traits (e.g., Lin et al., 2012; Runco, 2007) and intelligence (e.g., Batey, Chamorro-Premuzic,
& Furnham, 2009; Nusbaum & Silvia, 2011; Sternberg et al., 2005) are also correlated differently to different creativity
measures. Controlling for these variables allows us to clarify the relationships among two kinds of attention constructs and
two types of creative performance. In addition, due to the fact that effortful control and orienting sensitivity have not been used
before and the distinction between insight problem-solving and divergent thinking has been less investigated for Taiwanese
adults, we inspected the factor structure of attentional traits and creativities.
2. Methods
2.1. Participants and general procedures
A total of 320 undergraduate students from five universities in Taiwan participated in this study (57.8% female;
mean age = 19.45, SD = 1.89). Each participant gave informed consent and participated in some or all subtests (insight
1
Besides Eysenck’s (1995) pioneering idea about the relationships between high creativity and low inhibition, several recent studies empirically support
this notion. For example, empirical evidence demonstrated that highly creative individuals showed lower inhibitory function in the latent inhibition
paradigm (Carson, Peterson, & Higgins, 2003; Kéri, 2011), using divergent-thinking kinds of creativity measures.
W.-L. Lin et al. / Thinking Skills and Creativity 9 (2013) 96–106
99
problem task, HEXACO Personality Inventory, and Adult Temperament Questionnaire: n = 284; Abbreviated Torrance
Test for Adults: n = 301; Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices: n = 291) in consecutive testing sessions at twoweek interval, with each session lasting 1 h. All participants received a gift and were debriefed after finishing all
tasks.
2.2. Attentional traits measures
Effortful control and orienting sensitivity were assessed by using the ATQ (Evans & Rothbart, 2007), including the subscales
of activation control (12 items), attention control (12 items), and inhibitory control (11 items) as the measures of effortful
control and the subscales of general-perceptual sensitivity (17 items), affective-perceptual sensitivity (18 items), and associative
sensitivity (17 items) as the measures of orienting sensitivity. A 5-response Likert scale was used. Descriptive statistics and
intercorrelations for the scales of orienting sensitivity and effortful control are reported in Table 1. As shown in Table 1, six
subscales had satisfactory levels of internal consistency, as did the whole scale of effortful control and orienting sensitivity.
2.3. Creativity measures and procedures
2.3.1. Insight problem task
Eighteen insight problems (9 verbal and 9 figural) were first chosen from an insight problem inventory website at Indiana
University (www.indiana.edu/∼bobweb/d4.html), with respect to the criterion of “pure” insight problems that necessarily
require a reconstructing process (Weisberg, 1995). Based on a pretest, problems with moderate difficulty levels (accuracy
rates ranging from 21.6% to 70%) were chosen. The chosen verbal/figural problems correlated moderately with the figural/verbal problem accuracy and correlated significantly with total accuracy. Therefore, the insight problem task for the test
consisted of 10 problems: 5 verbal (e.g., the earth problem, the hole problem) and 5 figural (e.g., the line problem, the pigpen
problem), counterbalancing the proceedings of the verbal and figural questions.
The participants were given 20 min for this task and each problem was checked at the end to determine whether participants had previously known the answer to any of the problems. The performance scores were calculated as the percentage
of correct answers to unfamiliar problems of the verbal and figural problems, as well as to the total of 10 insight problems.
The participants’ average accuracy rates on the verbal, figural, and all problems were 38% (SD = .29), 43% (SD = .28), and 40%
(SD = .25), respectively. The correlation of accuracy rates between the verbal and figural problems was .55 (p < .01). To accurately estimate the coefficients of internal consistency for the scales of insight problems, tetrachoric correlations were used
to calculate a coefficient alpha (Gadermann, Guhn, & Zumbo, 2012). As Table 1 shows, Cronbach’s ˛ was .68 for the verbal
problems and the figural problems, and .88 for all problems.
2.3.2. Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults (ATTA)
The Chinese version of the ATTA (Chen, 2006) is an abbreviated and translated version of the Torrance Tests of Creative
Thinking (Torrance, 1966). The test was developed as a large-sample norm in Taiwan for undergraduate students and established stable reliability and validity results. It includes three subtests: a verbal test (question enumeration) and two figural
tests (figural completion), with 3 min allowed for each subtest. The participants’ responses were scored by two independent raters for fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration scores, which are among the most representative indices of
divergent thinking abilities. The fluency scores were simply the total number of responses generated by each participant.
The flexibility scores represented the number of different categories of responses. The originality scores represented the
sum of scores on each response compared to the norm; they were scored as either 0 (responses within the norm) or 1
(novel responses). The elaboration scores of the figural subtest were scored as the number of elaborated decorations in each
response. Descriptive statistics are reported in Table 1.
The participants’ performance on the ATTA was scored as follows: fluency: 12.11 ± 4.09; flexibility: 7.87 ± 2.69; originality: 3.22 ± 2.42; and elaboration: 5.36 ± 4.31. The scores for these indices were significantly correlated with the scores
for each of the others (the Pearson’s r ranged from .31 to .83, p < .01, except for originality and elaboration exhibited no
correlation, r = .07). The inter-rater reliability ranged from .83 to .96.
2.4. Personality measures
Lee and Ashton (2004) and Ashton and Lee (2009) developed a Revised HEXACO Personality Inventory (HEXACO-PI-R)
that measures six personality traits: honesty/humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and
openness to experience. These six personality traits were derived from the factor analysis results of the personality lexicons
of six different languages, and this personality model was considered to be more generalizable and inclusive than the
five-factor model (Lee & Ashton, 2004). There are 16 items for each personality trait. A 5-response Likert scale was used.
There were satisfactory levels of internal consistency coefficients across the six scales (ranging from .74 to .82) in this
study.
100
Table 1
Basic descriptions and intercorrelations for the scales of attentional traits and creativities.
Mean
39.65
43.90
44.17
127.89
70.41
69.40
62.60
202.72
4.96
5.73
5.93
12.63
7.71
7.62
8.17
19.46
Correlations
1
2
3
4
.62
.40**
.42**
.76**
.72
.30**
.75**
.72
.77**
.82
.10
.11
−.06
.04
.18**
.13*
.13*
.18**
.23**
.16*
.13*
.21**
*
5
.24**
.18**
.10
.20**
6
.81
.63**
.43**
.83**
7
.80
.49**
.85**
8
.80
.79**
*
9
10
11
13
14
15
.96a
.35**
.31**
.83**
.83a
.07
.37**
.88a
.35**
.92a
.90
.38
.43
.40
.29
.28
.25
.07
.09
.09
.00
-.04
-.03
.12
.05
.10
.06
.04
.06
.05
.09
.08
.07
.12
.11
.13
.23**
.20**
.11
.17**
.16*
.68
.55**
.88**
.68
.88**
.88
12.11
3.22
5.36
7.87
4.09
2.42
4.31
2.69
.10
-.05
.02
.07
.02
-.01
-.03
.04
.23**
.04
.07
.18**
.14*
-.01
.02
.13*
.13*
.15*
.12*
.13*
.16**
.13*
.15*
.12*
.21**
.05
.08
.14*
.19**
.13*
.13*
.15*
.22**
.11
.09
.24**
.19**
.08
.01
.23**
.24**
.11
.06
.26**
Coefficients on diagonal: Cronbach’s alpha.
a
Inter-rater reliabilities.
*
p < .05.
**
p < .01.
12
W.-L. Lin et al. / Thinking Skills and Creativity 9 (2013) 96–106
ATQ Effortful Control
1. Inhibitory control
2. Activation control
3. Attention control
4. Effortful control
ATQ Orienting Sensitivity
5. General-perceptual sensitivity
6. Affective-perceptual sensitivity
7. Associative sensitivity
8. Orienting sensitivity
Insight problem task
9. Insight-figural
10. Insight-verbal
11. Insight-total
ATTA
12. Fluency
13. Originality
14. Elaboration
15. Flexibility
SD
W.-L. Lin et al. / Thinking Skills and Creativity 9 (2013) 96–106
101
2.5. Intelligence measure and procedures
The Chinese version of Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices (APM; Yu, 1993) was administered to assess participants’
fluid intelligence (Raven & Raven, 2008). In each test item, several shapes were presented together with an empty one.
The participants had to identify the relationships between the presented shapes, choosing the most reasonable shape from
among eight shapes to predict the blank one. We excluded the first 12 items and used items 13–36 because the first 12 items
were found to add little to the discriminative power of the test (Bors & Stokes, 1998). The total administration time was
25 min.
The participants’ performance scores were calculated as the total number of items answered correctly. Our participants’
scores ranged from 0 to 23, with means = 12.45 and SD = 5.16 (Cronbach’s ˛ was .84).
2.6. Plan of analysis
Before examining the main predictions of this study, we inspected the structure of attentional traits and creativities.
Besides examining the correlations among attentional traits, creativity performances, personality traits and intelligence,
several confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were conducted to examine a one-factor model and a two-factor model for
attentional traits and creativities, respectively. The maximum likelihood estimation method was used in the LISREL 8.80 for
all of these CFA. The details of the different models are described in Section 3.
After these analyses, a series of hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine the effects of effortful
control and orienting sensitivity on insight problem-solving and divergent thinking. In order to control the effects of many
personality and intelligence variables, we entered personality and intelligence variables into the equation in the first step to
rule out the effects of those control variables in the regression analyses. Then, orienting sensitivity and effortful control were
entered in the second step to examine the contributions of those attentional traits to different creativities.
3. Results
3.1. Distinctions between different attentional constructs
3.1.1. Orienting sensitivity and effortful control
As shown in Table 1, the three aspects of orienting sensitivity—general-perceptual sensitivity, affective-perceptual sensitivity,
and associative sensitivity—were positively correlated with one another (rs = .63, .43, and .49) and correlated significantly
with the whole scale (rs above .79). The three aspects of effortful control—inhibitory control, activation control, and attention
control—were also positively correlated (rs = .40, .42, and .30) and correlated significantly with the whole scale (rs above .75).
Although both constructs reflect the concept of attentional breadth, some aspects of orienting sensitivity and effortful control
were not correlated (rs ranged from −.06 to .11), and some were mildly positively correlated (rs ranged from .13 to .24) with
small effect sizes, as defined by Cohen (1988).
To further inspect the two constructs of attentional traits, confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to verify the
structure of effortful control and orienting sensitivity. A two-factor model with correlated factors was tested. Activation
control, inhibitory control, and attention control were the indicators of effortful control; general-perceptual sensitivity, affectiveperceptual sensitivity, and associative sensitivity were the indictors of orienting sensitivity. The model fits the data well:
2 (8; n = 281) = 23.33, p < .001, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = .078, 90% Confidence Interval (CI)
for RMSEA = (.040; .119), standard root mean square residual (SRMR) = .05, non-normed fit index (NNFI) = .93, and comparative fit index (CFI) = .96. In addition, we also set and tested all scales of effortful control and orienting sensitivity in a
one-factor model. The model did not fit the data: 2 (9; n = 281) = 120.52, p < .001, RMSEA = .21, 90% CI for RMSEA = (.178;
.245), SRMR = .132, NNFI = .54, and CFI = .73. Those results indicated that these two constructs were better considered as
distinct.
3.1.2. Relationships between attentional traits and control variables
The correlations of orienting sensitivity and effortful control with the scales of HEXACO-PI-R are reported in Table 2. All of the
subscales of orienting sensitivity were mainly positively correlated to openness (rs ranged from .49 to .64). On the other hand,
inhibitory control, activation control, and effortful control were mainly positively correlated with conscientiousness (rs = .45,
.60, and .58); however, the correlation of attention control with conscientiousness was only .28. In addition, attention control
was positively and moderately correlated with agreeableness (r = .25) and openness (r = .30) but negatively with emotionality
(r = −.39). Activation control had moderate correlations with honesty–humility (r = .19), agreeableness (r = .15), and openness
(r = .13). Inhibition control was positively and moderately correlated with honesty–humility (r = .27) and agreeableness (r = .30)
but negatively with emotionality (r = −.21). Moreover, General-perceptual sensitivity and affective-perceptual sensitivity were
mildly correlated with extraversion (both r = .20) and conscientiousness (rs = .18 and .25, respectively). Other correlations of
the subscales of effortful control and orienting sensitivity with the scales of HEXACO-PI-R were low. Finally, inhibitory control
and associative sensitivity were positively correlated with APM (rs = .11 and .12, respectively), whereas activation control was
negatively correlated with APM (r = −.13).
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W.-L. Lin et al. / Thinking Skills and Creativity 9 (2013) 96–106
Table 2
The relationships between attentional traits, creativity measures and control variables.
HEXACO-PI-R
H
ATQ Effortful Control
Inhibitory control
Activation control
Attention control
Effortful control
ATQ Orienting Sensitivity
General-perceptual sensitivity
Affective-perceptual sensitivity
Associative sensitivity
Orienting sensitivity
Insight problem task
Insight-figural
Insight-verbal
Insight-total
ATTA
Fluency
Flexibility
Originality
Elaboration
.27**
.19**
.09
.24**
APM
E
X
−.21**
−.03
−.39**
−.28**
−.07
.10
.09
.06
A
C
.30***
.15**
.25***
.30***
.45**
.60**
.28**
.58**
.11
.13*
.30**
.24**
.11*
−.13*
.08
.01
.18**
.25**
−.004
.16**
.50**
.57**
.49**
.64**
−.07
−.04
.12*
−.01
.03
.13*
.09
.43**
.39**
.46**
.24**
.22**
.24**
.19**
.21**
.23**
.01
.20**
−.02
−.12*
−.15**
−.12*
−.04
.13*
−.05
.01
.20**
.20**
.14*
.21**
−.01
.05
.02
−.10
−.18*
−.16*
.09
.06
.08
.17*
.17*
.20*
.05
.01
.03
−.03
.06
.05
−.09
−.01
.07
−.09
.11
.12
.17*
.20**
.19*
.14
.07
.16*
.07
.06
.03
.02
−.02
.14*
.10
−.03
.09
O
APM, advanced progressive matrix; H, honesty–humility; E, emotionality; X, extraversion; A, agreeableness; C, conscientiousness; O, openness to experience.
*
p < .05.
**
p < .01.
3.2. Distinctions between different creativity measures
3.2.1. Divergent thinking and insight problem performance
The results showed that fluency and flexibility in the divergent thinking test exhibited low positive correlations with the
verbal, figural, and total insight problem-solving accuracy (rs ranged from .19 to .26), while the indices of originality and
elaboration were not correlated with insight problem performance (rs ranged from .01 to .11).
In CFA for examining the factor structure of creativity performance, a two-factor model with correlated factors was
also set. Fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration were the indicators of divergent thinking; verbal problem-solving and
pictorial problem-solving were the indicators of insight problem-solving. The model fit indices were satisfactory: 2 (8;
n = 281) = 5.93, p = .65; RMSEA = .002, 90% CI for RMSEA = (.0002; .059), SRMR = .02, NNFI = .98, and CFI = .98. In addition, we
also set and tested all scales of insight problem-solving and divergent thinking in a one-factor model. The model did not fit
the data: 2 (9; n = 281) = 80.68, p < .001, RMSEA = .17, 90% CI for RMSEA = (.136; .203), SRMR = .109, NNFI = .69, and CFI = .81.
Those results indicated that these two constructs could be considered as distinct.
3.2.2. Relationships between two creativity measures and control variables
As shown in Table 2, the indices of divergent thinking were found to mainly positively correlate to openness to experience (rs
ranged from .19 to .24, p < .01), while the indices of insight problem-solving were mainly negatively correlated to emotionality
(r = −.18 and −.16 for verbal and total scores, p < .05; and r = −.10 for figural scores) and also positively correlated with
Agreeableness (rs ranged from .17 to .20, p < .05). Both the indices of divergent thinking and insight problem-solving were
positively correlated to the APM scores, although the extent of the correlations was smaller for the former (rs ranged from
.20 to .23, p < .01, except for originality: r = .01) than the latter (rs ranged from .39 to .46, p < .01). These results indicate
that individuals’ performance on the two creativity measures was not closely related and that the two measures correlated
differently with personality traits and intelligence, suggesting a distinction between the two measures.
3.3. Relationships between different attentional constructs and different creativity measures
As shown in Table 1, most of indices of divergent thinking were positively correlated to orienting sensitivity and its
subscales (rs ranged from .12 to .21, except the originality and elaboration indices with associative sensitivity, where rs = .05
and .08, respectively). Furthermore, the fluency and flexibility indices were positively correlated to attention control (r = .23
and .18, p < .01, respectively) and to the whole scale of effortful control (r = .14 and .13, p < .05, respectively). On the other hand,
most of the indices of insight problem-solving were positively correlated to associative sensitivity (rs = .23 and .20 for the
verbal and total indices, p < .01; and r = .13 for the figural index, p < .05) and to the whole scale of orienting sensitivity (rs = .17
and .16 for the verbal and total indices, p < .05; except r = .11 for the figural index). The indices of insight problem-solving
were not correlated with effortful control.
W.-L. Lin et al. / Thinking Skills and Creativity 9 (2013) 96–106
103
Table 3
The predicted values of intelligence, personality traits and attentional constructs on creativity performances.
Insight problem
Model 1
APM
H
E
X
A
C
O
R2
F(7, 312)
Model 2
APM
H
E
X
A
C
O
OS
EC
R2
F(2, 310)
Divergent thinking
Verbal
Figural
Total
Fluency
Flexibility
Elaboration
Originality
.34***
−.05
−.13*
−.01
.00
.04
.11*
.16
8.20***
.39***
−.07
−.10+
.05
.04
.08
−.02
.18
9.53***
.41***
−.07
−.13*
.02
.02
.06
.05
.21
11.57***
.20***
−.01
.04
.08
−.01
.04
.20**
.10
4.01***
.21***
.05
.09
.10+
−.07
.02
.19***
.10
5.19***
.20***
.02
.13*
.12*
−.04
−.04
.17***
.10
5.16***
.01
.04
.04
.05
.00
−.02
.21***
.05
2.46*
.34***
−.02
−.16**
−.02
.01
.07
.02
.15*
−.08
.02
2.95*
.39***
−.05
−.11*
.04
.04
.07
−.10
.14*
−.02
.01
2.35+
.41***
−.04
−.15**
.02
.03
.08
−.04
.17**
−.05
.02
3.51*
.20***
−.03
.07
.07
−.02
−.03
.17**
.03
.12+
.01
1.48
.21***
.02
.13
.10
−.09
−.07
.18**
−.01
.16*
.01
2.52+
.20***
.01
.15*
.12*
−.05
−.08
.16*
.01
.06
.002
.39
.01
.06
.01
.06
.01
.04
.23***
−.02
−.09
.005
.83
APM, advanced progressive matrix; H, honesty–humility; E, emotionality; X, extraversion; A, agreeableness; C, conscientiousness; O, openness to experience; OS, orienting sensitivity; EC, effortful control.
+
p < .10.
*
p < .05.
**
p < .01.
***
p < .001.
According to the aforementioned results, intelligence and some personality traits were correlated with performance
on these two creativity measures and attentional traits. Thus, to clarify how orienting sensitivity and effortful control could
predict creative performance, hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted. In these regression analyses, the
personality traits of HEXACO-PI-R as well as intelligence were entered first as control variables; then orienting sensitivity
and effortful control were entered to estimate their effects on two creativity performances. These regression analyses results
are shown in Table 3.
As Table 3 shows the effects of most of the control variables were similar in Model 1 and Model 2. In the Model 2 (after
entering the orienting sensitivity and effortful control), the APM scores were able to predict both creativity performance (with
ˇs = .20 to .41, except for originality ˇ = .01); emotionality negatively predicted insight problem-solving performance (with
ˇs = −.11 to −.15); and openness to experience positively predicted divergent thinking performance (with ˇs = .16–.23). This
result pattern is similar to the correlational findings. Interestingly, when APM scores and the personality traits of HEXACOPI-R were controlled for, orienting sensitivity could predict only insight problem-solving (ˇs = .15, .14, and .17 for the verbal,
figural, and total scores, p < .05 and < .01, R2 = .01–.02, p < .05). On the other hand, effortful control could predict only the
flexibility index (with ˇ = .16, p < .05, R2 = .01, p < .1) in divergent thinking, although the “positive” value was not expected.
4. Discussion
The present study examined how two attentional constructs relate in different ways to two measures of creativity. Our
results generally showed that the assessment of orienting sensitivity and effortful control in the ATQ as well as the creativity
measurements of divergent thinking and insight problem-solving were distinct constructs or processes, and that they showed
respectively different relationships with the personality traits of HEXACO-PI-R and APM. In the regression analyses, although
APM scores exhibited significant predictive power with respect to creativity—which is consistent with previous notions (e.g.,
Nusbaum & Silvia, 2011; Sternberg et al., 2005)—attention scales did have independent effects on creativity when the effects
of personality traits and intelligence were controlled for. Orienting sensitivity was found to be able to predict insight problemsolving performance, while effortful control could predict fluency and flexibility in divergent thinking. These results indicated
that the two attentional constructs exhibited different relationships with the two creativity measures.
4.1. Orienting sensitivity, effortful control, and personality traits
Evans and Rothbart (2007) separated effortful control from orienting sensitivity and found that there was negative relation
between these two constructs (see also, Komsi et al., 2010). When inspecting the results concerning two attentional
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W.-L. Lin et al. / Thinking Skills and Creativity 9 (2013) 96–106
constructs and their relationships with openness and conscientiousness, we found that all of the scales of orienting sensitivity
were strongly correlated to openness, while attention control and effortful control were mildly positively correlated with
openness. By contrast, all of the scales of effortful control were strongly correlated with conscientiousness, while generalperceptual, affective-perceptual sensitivity, and orienting sensitivity had mildly positive correlations with conscientiousness.
These results further implied that effortful control and orienting sensitivity were different but positively related. Past research
found similar patterns of correlation between effortful control and orienting sensitivity in Taiwanese adolescents (Hsu, 2010).
As Rogoff (2003) suggested, middle-class U.S. parents train their children to focus on one thing at a time, whereas Mayan
parents direct their children’s attention broadly. The effect of cultural difference on the relationships between effortful
control and orienting sensitivity is an interesting issue worthy of further exploration.
Furthermore, the distinction between orienting sensitivity and effortful control might be reconsidered conceptually in a
broader context with respect to the framework of dual-process theories of cognition (Evans, 2003, 2008; Evans & Frankish,
2009; Stanovich & West, 2000). The dual-process theories suggest that people possess two alternative processing systems
under one cognitive function. One is the heuristic system (or System 1), which processes information in an associative,
intuitive, and effortless manner without capacity limits; the other is the analytic system (or System 2), which involves
logical and rule-based processes in which execution relies on cognitive resources. Researchers (e.g., Stanovich, 1999) indicate
that the choice of processing mode depends partly on variables of individual differences, for example, different cognitive
styles (such as those seen in the innovator–adapter distinction, Kirton, 1994; or in the holistic–analytic distinction, Zhang &
Sternberg, 2006) and personality traits. Openness was found to be positively related to System 1 processing (e.g., Lin et al.,
2012), and our results also show that orienting sensitivity is particularly related to openness. How the two constructs of
attention correspond to dual-process modes is another interesting issue worth further investigation.
4.2. Orienting sensitivity and two different creativities
Our results show that orienting sensitivity was positively correlated to insight problem-solving performance and could
predict it even after personality traits and intelligence were controlled. On the other hand, although orienting sensitivity
exhibited positive correlations with indices of divergent thinking, this effect disappeared after personality traits (especially
openness) and intelligence were controlled for in the regression analysis in Table 3. These results, taken together, not only
suggest that the two creativity measures correlate differently with distinct attentional constructs, but also suggest that there
are two components of orienting sensitivity that could be found: one is related to the absorptive nature of openness, and the
other is related to cognitive flexibility, as proposed by Feist (1998). Cognitive flexibility could foster the ability to attend
flexibly to information and is especially crucial in solving insight problems (e.g., Weisberg, 1995), while divergent thinking
performance could be fully explained by openness, not specifically with respect to this aspect of attentional traits.
4.3. Effortful control and divergent thinking
Although effortful control could predict only divergent thinking performance in our results, the positive coefficients were
inconsistent with previous findings that there were negative correlations between cognitive inhibition and divergent thinking performance (e.g., Eysenck, 1995; Lin, 2006). Harnishfeger (1995) categorized the concept of inhibition into behavioral
(action control) versus cognitive (thought control) categories, and research has found mixed correlational results for different inhibitory tasks (MacLeod, Dodd, Sheard, Wilson, & Bibi, 2003). For example, effortful control in the ATQ (some items
could be more compatible with the behavioral level) was not correlated with the reaction time of conflict solution in the
Attention Network Test (Posner et al., 2002). It is possible that the behavioral and cognitive levels of inhibition perform
different roles in divergent thinking.
In addition, as shown in Table 1, only the subscale of attention control in effortful control was positively correlated
with the fluency and flexibility indices in divergent thinking. The analyses showed that the other two subscales, as shown
in Table 2—activation control and inhibitory control—were highly and positively correlated with conscientiousness, while
attention control was moderately correlated with conscientiousness as well as with several other personality traits, such as
agreeableness, openness, and emotionality. These results implied that the psychological processes of attention control could be
somewhat different from the other two subscales of effortful control. Researchers (e.g., Anderson, 2002; Nusbaum & Silvia,
2011; Zabelina & Robinson, 2010) recently examined the role of executive functions in idea generation within divergent
thinking. For example, Gilhooly, Fioratou, Anthony, and Wynn (2007) suggested that good divergent thinking performance
requires identifying a useful strategy to resolve interference, and hence involves executive cognition. It is possible that attention control reflects more generally on the executive functions which fosters fluency and efficiency and enhances divergent
thinking performance. These possibilities need to be further investigated.
5. Conclusion
This preliminary study provided empirical evidence demonstrating that aspects of attentional traits—for example,
orienting sensitivity and effortful control—may have different effects on two widely applied creativity measures: divergent
thinking and insight problem-solving. We used the orienting sensitivity and effortful control scales from ATQ as a measure
of two aspects of attentional breadth in this study. Although these scales could measure some processes of cognitive
W.-L. Lin et al. / Thinking Skills and Creativity 9 (2013) 96–106
105
mechanisms, it is possible that some research procedures in a self-reported inventory could limit the effects of these two
attentional traits. In addition, the low levels of internal consistency for the subscales of insight problems and the small
effect size of attentional control on the performance of divergent thinking should be approached with caution to explain
these results in this study and still need further investigation. In sum, the exploratory findings provided by this study
could help clarify the relationships between the breadth of attention trait and different kinds of creative performance,
suggesting an important direction for future research examining the mental construct of attentional traits and investigating
the relationships of various factors with creativity.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported partially by a grant to Wei-Lun Lin (NSC 97-2410-H-431-014) and Kung-Yu Hsu (NSC 982410-H-431-004-MY2) from National Science Council of Taiwan. The work was also supported by the Ministry of Education,
Taiwan, under the Aiming for the Top University Plan at National Taiwan Normal University. We thank Professor Craft and
anonymous reviewers for their extremely helpful comments.
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