A Failure to Replicate Episodic Specificity Induction on Divergent Thinking

Previous research has shown that a brief episodic memory training, known as the Episodic Specificity Induction (ESI), in which participants recall specific details from a video, can enhance the generation of creative ideas in divergent thinking tasks such as the Alternative Uses Test (AUT). However, recent findings have questioned the robustness of this effect. To address these discrepancies, the present study reports two experiments aimed at replicating this phenomenon. In Experiment 1, young adults recalled details from cartoon clips, whereas Experiment 2 replicated the procedure of Madore et al. (2015) to examine the effect of ESI on AUT performance. Across both experiments, results provided no evidence supporting the effectiveness of ESI in enhancing creative idea generation. One possible explanation for these contrasting findings concerns the role of cultural context, as the present studies were conducted with Spanish participants, in contrast to previous research carried out in the United States. Overall, these findings underscore the importance of further research to clarify the conditions under which ESI may facilitate divergent thinking.