Does the Task Structure Impact the Fluency Confound in Divergent Thinking? An Investigation with TTCT-Figural

Fluency confound (FC) has been a widely studied issue in divergent thinking (DT) tasks. In this study, the impact of DT task structure on FC was examined by focusing on activity level data from Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) – Figural. The TTCT-Figural involves two different task structures. Prompts in Activities 1 and 2 are designed for a single response each, for a total of 11, whereas Activity 3 allows for up to 30 responses through repeated presentation of a single prompt. The differences between the two task structures were tested by analyzing data from 477 adults. Correlations with and without Activity 3 scores indicated that FC is largely avoided when Activity 3 is dropped from the total calculation of scores. Additionally, FC increased when bonus originality points were excluded from analyses. These findings indicate that FC could be avoided when DT task structure is designed to restrict fluency. Furthermore, confirmatory factor analyses supported a two-factor structure model even when Activity 3 scores were removed. Thus, a two-factor structure is unlikely to be the result of FC. Implications are discussed in the context of divergent thinking assessments and the identification of students for gifted and talented programs.