Modelling Divergent Thinking as a Mediator Between Artificial Intelligence Cognitive Stimulation and EFL Learners’ Cognitive Creativity

Research on AI-supported EFL learning has largely focused on learning outcomes, with limited attention to the cognitive mechanisms underlying creativity and the role of AI experience in shaping this process. This study examined how AI cognitive stimulation relates to EFL learners’ cognitive creativity, as measured by divergent thinking, with attention to the conditioning role of AI experience. Using a quantitative, correlational, cross-sectional design, data were collected from 878 undergraduate EFL learners recruited through stratified cluster sampling across four public universities in Saudi Arabia. Following instrument validation through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modelling was employed to test direct, indirect, and conditional relationships among the study variables. The findings show that AI cognitive stimulation was strongly associated with divergent thinking (β = 0.52), and divergent thinking was strongly associated with cognitive creativity (β = 0.46). Although AI cognitive stimulation was directly associated with cognitive creativity, this effect was relatively limited. Mediation analysis showed that divergent thinking accounted for the primary pathway linking AI cognitive stimulation to cognitive creativity. Moderated mediation analysis further showed that learners’ duration of AI experience modestly but meaningfully conditioned this indirect pathway without altering its structural form. These results indicate that creative cognition in AI-supported EFL learning depends primarily on learner-controlled ideational processes rather than exposure to AI-generated content alone. The study contributes a process-oriented account of creativity in EFL contexts by specifying the cognitive pattern through which AI-related stimulation is associated with creative capacity and by clarifying how accumulated AI experience conditions this process.