Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The current study explored whether creative processes specifically incubation and the serial order effect extend to creativityin mathematics, and if there is a relation to divergent thinking. A total of 155 postsecondary students completed an unusualuse task and a multiple-strategy math task. Participants were given 8 minutes to generate as many strategies as they couldfor the math task, and then after a brief break, were given another problem with the same underlying structure for 4minutes. We find evidence for a serial order effect in math, whereas across trials it became more difficult for participantsto generate a new strategy, but the strategies were rated as more creative. The brief break also provided some evidence ofincubation, as there was a boost in the number of overall strategies and creativity. We also found that divergent thinkingand mathematical creativity were significantly related.