Creativity
Do older and younger adults think creatively in different ways?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Older adults were as creative as younger adults at inventing new uses for objects and better at finding word links, but the two age groups seemed to rely on different mental abilities to get there.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cross-sectional — Individual-differences comparison of a younger and an older age group, each completing intelligence, executive-function, semantic knowledge/control and creativity tasks over one video-call session plus two online sessions.
- N
- N=120 · 120 analysed participants after excluding people with neurological illness, colour blindness or ADHD: 60 older adults (aged 60-90) and 60 younger adults (students aged 18-35).
- Population
- UK native English speakers: undergraduate psychology students and older adult volunteers from a university panel, with no reported neurological illness.
- Outcome
- Convergent thinking (Remote Associates Test accuracy) and divergent thinking (Alternate Uses Task fluency, elaboration, uniqueness, human creativity ratings and AI-scored originality).
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
Key findings
Younger adults were faster and had better executive functions, while older adults had more vocabulary knowledge, better controlled retrieval and solved more Remote Associates items; the groups did not differ on the quality of their alternate uses. Remote Associates success was predicted by semantic knowledge (odds of a correct answer rose 1.55-fold per standard deviation) and by working-memory updating, and once knowledge was controlled the older group's advantage disappeared. For divergent thinking, semantic selection predicted more original ideas in younger adults only, whereas in older adults human-rated creativity was predicted by processing speed and, surprisingly, by weaker inhibition.
Methodology
The researchers tested 60 younger and 60 older adults on processing speed, fluid reasoning, three executive functions (updating, inhibition, shifting), vocabulary knowledge, and two kinds of semantic control: controlled retrieval of weak word associations and semantic selection among competing meanings. Creativity was measured with the Remote Associates Test (finding one word linking three cues, a convergent task) and the Alternate Uses Task (thinking up unusual uses for a hanger and a bucket, a divergent task), scored five ways including human and AI ratings. Regression models asked which abilities predicted each creativity score and whether this differed by age group.
Limitations
This is a cross-sectional comparison of two age groups at one time point, so it cannot show how creativity changes within a person as they age, and the groups differ in many ways besides age (the younger group were all psychology students). All findings are correlational and the analyses were not preregistered, with many predictors and several creativity metrics tested, raising the risk of chance findings. The divergent-thinking task used only two objects, and knowledge was measured as vocabulary, which the authors note may miss the object and life knowledge that alternate-uses ideas depend on.
How this study connects
Role on claims
Each row is a claim on a concept or method page where this paper supports, challenges, or qualifies the statement. Roles are hand-checked — not a model guess.
Not yet placed on a claim. This paper has study layers, but no concept page yet cites it as support, challenge, or qualifier.
Related papers in this topic
Same topic cluster — not a recommendation engine.