Understanding the Creative Thinking Contribution in Design Fluency: Graph Theory Analysis

Design fluency is the ability to create innovative figural designs, often associated with executive function but also involving creative thinking (divergent thinking). Traditional assessments focus primarily on fluency, overlooking the multifaceted nature of creativity. This study explores the role of creative thinking in design fluency. The creative thinking of design fluency was developed to add flexibility (variety of figural categories) and originality (uniqueness of designs) to traditional fluency measures. Seventy-two participants completed the Design Fluency Test and their diffusion tensor imaging data were collected. The results show that design fluency and design originality are closely related to topological properties of the brain network, including clustering coefficient, small-world properties, global efficiency and local efficiency. However, design flexibility is not related to topological properties. In node efficiency, design fluency was positively correlated with node efficiency in the bilateral superior frontal gyrus, right middle frontal gyrus, right inferior frontal gyrus and right superior temporal gyrus. Design originality was significantly positively correlated with the right superior frontal gyrus and left medial frontal gyrus. This study highlights the contribution of creative thinking to design fluency and underlines the importance of investigating different multifaceted nature of creativity in the context of design fluency tests.