Adult Age Differences in Divergent Thinking: It's Just a Matter of Time

This study examined adult age differences on five tests of divergent thinking: associational fluency, expressional fluency, ideational fluency, word fluency, and consequences. Our hypothesis was that young adults (M = 20.53, n = 60) would score higher than old adults (M = 72.10, n = 60) under standard timed test conditions, but old adults would perform as well as young adults when time limits were removed. The hypothesis was confirmed. Old adults can think as divergently as young adults, but they do so at a much slower rate.