Fluid Intelligence and Creativity

Fluid Intelligence and Creativity

Fluid Intelligence

One textbook defines fluid intelligence as the “ability to deal with novel problem-solving situations for which personal experience does not supply a solution. That's a pretty broad definition. It's probably made clearer by describing what it does not include.

Fluid intelligence does not rely on experience. It relies on things like inductive reasoning, abstract reasoning, and pattern matching. It deeply engages your ability to come up with unique solutions when presented with vexing stimuli. This not the realm of experience dependence. That's why the definition includes problem-solving skills.

From an evolutionary perspective, we think that these talents spring directly from the geological and meteorological instability of our East African birthplace. If we couldn't solve a problem on the spot, if we didn't have robust fluid intelligence abilities, given our biological wimpiness, we'd be dead.

Many brainteasers exercise fluid intelligence. If you're good at them, you may have strong fluid intelligence scores.

Inductive reasoning, problem solving, and pattern matching are all skills that engage the more creative aspects of our psychological selves. Exactly what does creativity mean under these conditions? How does it relate to fluid intelligence? There is a relationship between fluid intelligence and creativity; they may actually intersect at a memory system and may even be two sided of the same coin.

Creativity

Creativity may involve a balance between two cognitions on opposite sides of a catwalk. On one side, we have something called cognitive disinhibition; on the other side, we have something called latent inhibition.

Noted Harvard psychologist Shelley Carson defines cognitive disinhibition as the failure to disregard information that is irrelevant to some preestablished goal, thought process, or activity. Simply put, you choose not to remove extraneous facts from your conscious awareness, even if those facts are irrelevant to whatever goal you are trying to achieve.

One way to illustrate cognitive disinhibition is to find new uses for something. Laboratory instruments have been devised that measure it – instruments called tests of divergent thinking.

People who have unrestrained, or unrestrainable cognitive disinhibition often have a mental health issue, such as schizophrenia. Photo by Elena.

One famous example involves finding new uses for a brick. If you are not particularly creative, you might respond by explaining that it could be a paperweight or doorstop. Someone who scores high on divergent thinking tests might say that he or she would scrape the brick with sandpaper, mix the dust with water, and use the concoction to paint something.

Unfortunately, not all disinhibited responses are signs of creativity. For some people, cognitive disinhibition is a weapon of mass distraction. It results in the collapse of something we call cognitive filtering, which itself has many complex neurological processes associated with it.

On the opposite end of the catwalk is latent inhibition. Put simply, latent inhibition is the ability to block out options in pursuit of some goal, such as communicating with someone. It is a filtering system, and we use it all the time. It can even be measured in the laboratory.

If you have high latent inhibition scores, you can block out a lot of the options being offered to you in pursuit of a goal. If you have low latent inhibition scores, you become willing to entertain more and more unusual – potentially irrelevant, certainly uninhitibted – ideas. It is very possibly that these data are revealing the internal circuitry of narrow-mindedness and also the intoxicating freedom of choice.

There has been a great deal of interest in these filtering systems in the mental health community. Indeed, some researchers say that the presence of creativity and the presence of mental illness go hand in hand. Others simply say that it is a matter of perspective. 

Cognitive dishinhibition and latent inhibition reside side by side, in tension in typically functioning human beings. You don't get creativity with both. How do these relate to fluid intelligence? Where they may find common ground lies at the intersection of creativity and a memory system known as working memory, or short-term memory.

Some researchers say that the presence of creativity and the presence of mental illness go hand in hand. Illustration by Elena.