Cognitive Control and Creativity in Children: The Role of Task‐Specific Demands in Divergent Thinking

ABSTRACT Cognitive control is known to support divergent thinking in adults, but findings in children remain mixed. This study examined the association between cognitive control—measured as a composite score from two executive function tasks—and verbal divergent thinking in 120 French‐speaking school‐aged children (aged 10 to 12 years). Originality and fluency scores on the Alternate Uses Tests (AUT) and the Consequences Tests (CT) were moderately correlated, supporting their convergent validity. However, children demonstrated higher fluency and originality on the AUT than on the CT. Importantly, the two tasks showed different patterns of association with cognitive control, which was more strongly related to originality in the AUT. This task‐specific effect was consistent across both AI‐ and human‐based scoring methods. Additional analyses revealed that children with greater cognitive control generated more original ideas earlier in the tasks, with a gradual decline over time. This temporal pattern remained consistent across both tasks. In contrast, fluency was less consistently related to cognitive control and did not exhibit task‐specific effects. Together, these findings provide further evidence that cognitive control plays a role in preadolescents' creative performance, while also highlighting possible task‐specific demands that carry important implications for understanding the development and assessment of divergent thinking.