A Phrase Well Turned: Creative Facility in Narrative Production.

It is commonly recognized that messages are simultaneously patterned and creative, but studies of message production have tended to focus on repetitive features of messages, to the relative exclusion of examination of their novel characteristics. This study is concerned with creative facility—the ability readily to construct novel, appropriate messages. In order to investigate this phenomenon, subjects produced a series of simple SITUATION-ACTION-BECAUSE narratives and also completed measures of speed of information processing (Digit-Symbol Substitution Test, DSST), cognitive tempo (Matching Familiar Figures Test, MFFT), and need for cognitive structure (Personal Need for Structure scale, PNS). Results indicate each of these measures was related to the speed with which participants were able to formulate their narratives. Moreover, the impact of both cognitive tempo, assessed as number of errors on the MFFT, and need for cognitive structure was heightened under more cognitively demanding message-production conditions. Implications of these results and suggestions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]