Abstract: Cognitive inhibition is a kind of important processing mechanism in creative thinking. Cognitive inhibition is a processing that inhibits cognitive process or cognitive content. At present, there exists three arguments about the relationship between creative thinking and cognitive inhibition: cognitive disinhibition hypothesis, cognitive inhibition hypothesis, and adaptive cognitive inhibition hypothesis. Cognitive disinhibiton hypothesis claims that cognitive inhibition ability of creative individuals is lower than those of less creative individuals, creative individuals have a characteristic of defocused attention, pay more attention to irrelevant informations, and have the similar biological basis with schizophrenia patients; cognitive inhibition hypothesis believes that creative individuals have higher ability of cognitive inhibition; and adaptive cognitive inhibition hypothesis considers that creative individuals have flexible cognitive inhibition ability, they may regulate their attention when they face different cognitive tasks and different stages in problem solving, this adjustment is automatic or reactive, and does not contain self control. In addition, creative individuals have different attention mode in creative problem solving. In the earlier stage, the problem is relatively poor defined, creative individuals tend to focus attention, and are vulnerable to the affects of irrelevant information; In the later stage, creative individuals adopt developmental views, and benefit from inhibiting irrelevant informations and focused attention. 　　This paper reviewed the researches about the relationship between creative thinking and cognitive inhibition in recent 10 years from following three aspects. Firstly, different theory explanations, such as the causal theory of creativity, attentional-associative model in creativity, and the attention intermediary model in creativity, were introduced here. Secondly, some studies that supported hypotheses above were reviewed respectively. Thirdly, neural mechanism of creative thinking studies had shown that prefrontal cortex (PC) and Anterior Cingulated Cortex (ACC) might be the key brain areas for cognitive disinhibition or cognitive inhibition in creative thinking，and investigated the role of alpha activity in explaining the process of creative thinking. It found that alpha activity was contributed to the tasks with higher inner processing demands in creative thinking. Previous studies had many inconsistent conclusions, and many studies need to improve. Many studies using unconscious cognitive inhibition paradigms also existed many contradictions, and researches using conscious cognitive inhibition paradigm to explore the relationship between creative thinking and cognitive inhibition were lacking. Further research is needed to develop and integrate some theories, investigate some factors which influence the relationship between creative thinking and cognitive inhibition by using behavioral experiments, and studies need find brain areas when individuals are inhibiting by using neuroscience methods, and analyze different stages in the process of creative thinking in order to investigate the mechanism of cognitive inhibition.

Key words: creative thinking, cognitive inhibition, cognitive disinhibition

摘要： 抑制是创造性思维过程中的一种重要的认知加工机制。创造性思维与认知抑制的关系主要有三种观点：创造性思维的认知去抑制假说、认知抑制假说和适应性认知抑制假说。本文系统评述了创造性思维与认知抑制关系的相关理论、研究新进展和神经机制。未来研究应加强创造性思维与认知抑制关系的理论整合与构建，分析创造性思维的不同阶段的认知抑制机制，采用无意抑制与有意抑制研究范式，对创造性思维与认知抑制的关系、影响因素及神经机制进行深入研究。

关键词: 创造性思维, 认知抑制, 认知去抑制