Compared to individuals who are rated as less creative, higher creative individuals tend to produce ideas more quickly and with more novelty-what we call faster-and-further phenomenology. This has traditionally been explained either as supporting an associative theory-based on differences in the structure of cognitive representations-or as supporting an executive theory-based on the principle that higher creative individuals utilize cognitive control to navigate their cognitive representations differently. Though extensive research demonstrates evidence of differences in semantic structure, structural explanations are limited in their ability to formally explain faster-and-further phenomenology. At the same time, executive abilities also correlate with creativity, but formal process models explaining how they contribute to faster-and-further phenomenology are lacking. Here, we introduce entropy modulation theory which integrates structure and process-based creativity accounts. Relying on a broad set of evidence, entropy modulation theory assumes that the difference between lower and higher creative individuals lies in the executive modulation of entropy during cognitive search (e.g., memory retrieval). With retrieval targets racing to reach an activation threshold, activation magnitude and variance both independently enhance the entropy of target retrieval and increase retrieval speed, reproducing the faster-and-further phenomenology. Thus, apparent differences in semantic structure can be produced via an entropy modulating retrieval process, which tunes cognitive entropy to mediate cognitive flexibility and the exploration-exploitation trade-off. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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创造性探索的熵调制理论。


与那些被认为创造力较低的人相比，创造力较高的人往往会更快、更新颖地产生想法——我们称之为更快更远的现象学。传统上，这被解释为支持基于认知表征结构差异的联想理论，或者支持执行理论，该理论基于较高创造力的个体利用认知控制以不同方式导航其认知表征的原则。尽管广泛的研究证明了语义结构差异的证据，但结构解释在正式解释更快更进一步的现象学方面的能力有限。与此同时，执行能力也与创造力相关，但缺乏正式的过程模型来解释它们如何促进更快更进一步的现象学。在这里，我们引入熵调制理论，该理论集成了基于结构和过程的创造力账户。依靠广泛的证据，熵调制理论假设较低和较高创造力个体之间的差异在于认知搜索（例如，记忆检索）过程中熵的执行调制。随着检索目标竞相达到激活阈值，激活幅度和方差都独立地增强了目标检索的熵并提高了检索速度，再现了更快更远的现象。因此，语义结构的明显差异可以通过熵调节检索过程产生，该过程调整认知熵以调节认知灵活性和探索-利用权衡。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。