The nature of summary statistical representation and its relation to creativity

The primary purpose of the study is to investigate and challenge the assumed obligatory and/or automatic nature of SSRs by manipulating the visual span of attention. The second goal is to investigate whether introducing an ensemble task or single-item recognition task influences thinking style, with a focus on divergent thinking. Two different experimental studies were conducted to achieve these aims. The first experiment was conducted with the participation of 37 undergraduate students. The study consisted of a 2 (congruent vs. incongruent instructions of attention) x 2 (task type: mean vs. member tasks) within-subject experimental design. While the accuracy rate was analyzed with repeated measures ANOVA, reaction times were analyzed with the nonparametric Friedman test. In the second experiment, there were 60 students. The study had an experimental design with a control group. Data analysis was conducted with a one-way ANOVA on the dimensions of divergent thinking. In the first experiment, we found a main effect of task type on accuracy levels but no interaction effect or main effect of congruency. Reaction times for the summary representation task were significantly longer than for individual item representations. The second experiment revealed that receiving ensemble versus individual member representations had no significant effect on divergent thinking ability compared to the control group. Findings of the first experiment indicated that even though representing ensembles with statistical summaries was more efficient than representing single items, it was not automatic due to the longer response times in ensemble condition. The second experiment demonstrated that perceiving ensembles rather than individual items did not create any differences in divergent thinking ability and that these processes were employed in a taskspecific manner that did not encompass divergent thinking measures.