Individuals with highly superior autobiographical memory do not show enhanced creative thinking

ABSTRACT

Creative ideas are thought to result from flexible recombination of concepts from memory. A growing number of behavioural and neuroscientific studies provide evidence of a link between episodic memory and divergent thinking; however, little is known about the potential contributions of autobiographical memory to creative ideation. To provide a novel perspective on this issue, we assessed measures of divergent and convergent creative thinking in a cohort (n = 14) of rare individuals showing Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM). The HSAM cohort completed memory tasks in addition to a battery of creativity measures, including the Alternative Uses Task, Consequences Task and Remote Associates Task. We performed statistical analyses to establish whether there were any significant differences between HSAM and controls (n = 28) across these measures. Although HSAM participants were superior in the recall of autobiographical events compared to controls, we observed no overall difference between the groups in relation to the creativity measures. These findings suggest that the constructive episodic processes relevant to creative thinking are not enhanced in individuals with HSAM, perhaps because they are compulsively and narrowly focused on consolidation and retrieval of autobiographical events.

KEYWORDS:

• Convergent thinking
• Creativity
• divergent thinking
• highly superior autobiographical memory
• working memory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The experiment reported here was not preregistered. The datasets generated and analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Notes

1 Initially, we recruited fourteen control subjects. The number of controls was then doubled following the requested of an anonymous reviewer to enlarge the sample size of the control group. The pattern of results was similar before and after the inclusion of these additional controls.

Additional information

Funding

Supported by the Italian Ministry of Health (RF-2019-12369567, to P.C. and V.S.) and by the Bial Foundation (grant number 75/20, to V.S.).