Intelligence, Creativity and the Processes of Spreading Activation

Abstract

The seeks the processes in common which might account for the perceived correlation between intellect and creative abilities. Though the idea of a link between creativity and spreading activation is rather old, it has not been involved in the discussion of the processes behind intelligence. The author suggests that her experiments (one is with intelligence tests, the other is with words recognition and categorisation) allows one to hypothesise that spreading activation might play an essential role in intellectual processes as well. She offers a model that describes a special effect which activation has on intellectual task solving.