Abstract: Numerous studies show that the creativity is related to the attention, memory, language, thinking and other cognitive processes. According to previous researches, there are three different views on the cognitive psychological mechanism of creative performance level during problem solving process. The first view is that the cognitive disinhibition is critical to the creative performance. The second view is that the cognitive inhibition prevents useless information and is beneficial to the creative performance. The third view is the adaptive cognitive inhibition hypothesis, that the attention of the high creative person is not always defocus, but changes according to the creative task and the different stages of problem solving. All the past researches pay attention to the automatic inhibition, which occurs at the unconscious level. Compared with low creative persons, how is the performance of high creative persons at intentional inhibition task remains a question. Considering that directed forgetting paradigm (DF) can explore one’s intentional cognitive inhibition with regard to memory, it is used to investigate the different ability in intentional inhibition between people with different levels of creative performance. This study conducted one experiment involving with 48 college students as its participants. The experiment employed a 2×2×2×2 mixed model design. The four manipulated variables were as follows: (a) for the creative level: high creative performance or low creative performance; (b) for the emotion valence: neutral or negative; (c) for the cue: remember or forget; (d) for the duration time before cue presented: 2s or 5s. In learning stage, 40 words(20 neutral, 20 negative) were presented randomly one by one in 2s or 5s, followed by a cue “remember” or “forget” to ask participants to remember or forget the word. Then participants were asked to do distraction task immediately, that they add two-digit numbers in their heads for 2 minutes. After the distraction task, they were given a recognition test including 40 studied words and 40 new words. All the words presented in the learning stage were judged to be “old”, words not seen were judged to be “new”. The results are as follows: (1) low creative subjects showed obvious directed forgetting effect in neutral words at duration of 2s and 5s, but not in the negative words; (2) High creative subjects showed obvious directed forgetting effect in neutral words at duration of 2s and 5s. But the directed forgetting effect reduced only when the negative words were presented in 5s. when the negative words was presented in 2s, there was obvious directed forgetting effect. These results suggested that compared with the low creative subjects, the high creative ones are better at inhibiting negative information. In summary, we investigate the differences between high creative persons and low creative persons in directing forgetting effects. The results show that persons who get higher score in creative task are better at intentional cognitive inhibition in negative words at shorter time than the ones who get lower score. The result agrees with adaptive cognitive inhibition hypothesis. The current study indicates that high creative persons can focus on wanted information and inhibit unwanted information intentionally. High creative people are more likely to forget information, especially the negative information that they don’t want.

Key words: creative performance, directed forgetting, intentional cognitive inhibition, negative emotion

摘要： 采用单字法定向遗忘范式，考察远距离联想任务得分高低者在中性和负性词语定向遗忘效应上的差异，来探讨创造性思维水平高低与主动抑制的关系。实验采用2（高/低创造性思维水平）×2（中性/负性词汇）×2（记住/忘记指令）×2（2s/ 5s时间间隔）混合设计，发现高低创造力组，在材料不同呈现时间下，对不同情绪材料的定向遗忘效应分别不同。低创者在2s和5s以及高创者在5s时间间隔时，均对中性词语表现出定向遗忘效应，而对负性词语没有明显的定性遗忘。高创者在2s时间间隔下，对中性和负性词语均表现出定向遗忘效应。结果表明较短时间内高创者对负性情绪的主动抑制能力优于低创者。

关键词: 创造性思维水平, 定向遗忘, 主动抑制, 负性情绪