Divergent thinking and differential focusing of perceptual attention in visual serial search tasks

• How does the differential focusing of perceptual attention relate to divergent thinking?
• Creativity theories of Eysenck and Martindale bring distinguishing predictions to bear on the above-mentioned relations.
• Divergent thinking facilitates perceptual attentional performance.
• Creative people are flexible in that they are able to switch from focused to defocused attention and vice versa.
• A dual-route account is proposed to consolidate the data obtained.

Seminal creativity theories developed by Eysenck and Martindale bring distinguishing predictions to bear on relations between divergent thinking and attention. Drawing upon these theories, the current study was intended to investigate whether the differential focusing of perceptual attention accommodated within visual serial search tasks relates to divergent thinking. An elementary cognitive task was employed to simulate focused perceptual attention and a cognitive inhibition task to simulate defocused perceptual attention. The data obtained lend support to both theories: The attentional distraction scores were more consistent with Martindale's theory, and the attentional selection scores with Eysenck's theory. The theories of Martindale and Eysenck are considered as complementary rather than mutually exclusive, relative to the differential focusing of perceptual attention in visual serial search tasks with respect to divergent thinking.