Peer-reviewed research
Interaction effect of response medium and working memory capacity on creative idea generation
Ning Hao et al., Frontiers in Psychology, 2015 · DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01582
Read the originalRead on October 16, 2026
- What it is
- A laboratory study of 90 participants with higher or lower working memory capacity, who generated uses for everyday objects (the Alternative Uses Task) either by writing their ideas down or by speaking them aloud.
- How much weight it carries
- Peer-reviewed and published in an open-access journal. It measures idea fluency on one creativity task in one lab, so it is not a test of writer's block or of long-form writing. The authors are from East China Normal University, and the participants were not dictation users.
Facts taken from this source
- The 2015 study's mediation analysis found that cognitive demand fully accounted for the difference in idea fluency between writing and speaking.
“level of cognitive demand fully mediated the effect of response medium on AUT fluency” (Abstract)
- In a 2015 laboratory study of 90 participants, fluency on the Alternative Uses Task was higher when ideas were written down than when they were spoken aloud.
“fluency of AUT performance was higher in the writing than in the speaking condition” (Abstract)