The impact of working memory on divergent thinking flexibility

Abstract The current study focuses on the relationship between working memory (WM) and flexibility, which is a dimension of divergent thinking. The research consisted of two experiments in which the participants’ task was to categorize given objects into as many categories as possible. We assumed that manipulation of the visual or relational complexity of a set of figures would respectively affect WM’s ability to maintain and process goal-relevant information. Additionally, the dual-task paradigm was used to observe the relocation of attention resources in the task because WM capacity is limited by attention resources. We hypothesized that both attentional control and the ability to maintain/process goal-relevant information in WM would affect the level of flexibility. The results show that an increased load on WM storage and on processing mechanisms leads to a decline in flexibility scores, which becomes especially apparent when the secondary task, which makes WM capacity more vulnerable, is applied. We conclude that the flexibility of divergent thinking is equally positively associated with the efficiency of WM mechanisms, i.e., storage and processing of current information, and the ability to use controlled attention.