Should executive control, as indicated by working memory capacity (WMC) and mind-wandering propensity, help or hinder creativity? Sustained and focused attention should help guide a selective search of solution-relevant information in memory and help inhibit uncreative, yet accessible, ideas. However, unfocused attention and daydreaming should allow mental access to more loosely relevant concepts, remotely linked to commonplace solutions. Three individual-differences studies inserted incubation periods into one or two divergent thinking tasks and tested whether WMC (assessed by complex span tasks) and incubation-period mind wandering (assessed as probed reports of task-unrelated thought [TUT]) predicted post-incubation performance. Retrospective self-reports of Openness (Experiment 2) and mind-wandering and daydreaming propensity (Experiment 3) complemented our thought-probe assessments of TUT. WMC did not correlate with creativity in divergent thinking, whereas only the questionnaire measure of daydreaming, but not probed thought reports, weakly predicted creativity; the fact that in-the-moment TUTs did not correlate divergent creativity is especially problematic for claims that mind-wandering processes contribute to creative cognition. Moreover, the fact that WMC tends to strongly predict analytical problem solving and reasoning, but may not correlate with divergent thinking, provides a useful boundary condition for defining WMC's nomological net. On balance, our data provide no support for either benefits or costs of executive control for at least one component of creativity.

中文翻译：

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工作记忆能力、走神和创造性认知：对受控思维与自发思维益处的个体差异调查。

正如工作记忆容量 (WMC) 和走神倾向所表明的那样，执行控制应该有助于还是阻碍创造力？持续和集中的注意力应该有助于引导有选择地搜索记忆中与解决方案相关的信息，并有助于抑制缺乏创造性但易于理解的想法。然而，注意力不集中和做白日梦应该允许精神访问更松散相关的概念，远程连接到普通的解决方案。三项个体差异研究将潜伏期插入到一两个发散思维任务中，并测试了 WMC（通过复杂跨度任务评估）和潜伏期思维游荡（评估为与任务无关的思考 [TUT] 的探测报告）是否预测了孵化后表现。对开放性（实验 2）和走神和做白日梦倾向（实验 3）的回顾性自我报告补充了我们对 TUT 的思想探索评估。WMC与发散性思维中的创造力无关，而只有白日梦的问卷测量，而不是探索性思维报告，对创造力的预测较弱；即时 TUT 与发散的创造力无关这一事实对于声称走神过程有助于创造性认知的说法尤其成问题。此外，WMC 倾向于强烈预测分析问题的解决和推理，但可能与发散思维无关，这一事实为定义 WMC 的规则网络提供了有用的边界条件。总的来说，