An analysis of early vs. later responses on a divergent production task across three time press conditions

Traditional assessments of divergent production have employed standard time press conditions of three minutes for measures of fluency, flexibility, an d originality. Recent studies have provided evidence that the traditional t ime press condition may impede both fluency and quality of responses and th at differences in divergent production responses have been found under a va riety of creative prompting conditions. The purpose of the present study wa s to examine the effects of three time press and three creative prompt cond itions on early vs. later trial originality scores for three divergent prod uction stimuli. The participants were 91 undergraduate students enrolled in Educational Psychology courses who were randomly assigned to one of six ex perimental groups. The six groups were counterbalanced across the three vig nette tasks in time press requirements and creative prompting. Aggregate di fferences were found in which there was a higher frequency of originality s cores for the latter portions of trials as compared with the early portion of trials for all time press and prompting conditions.