Specific features of the relationship between creativity and inhibitory control in young adolescents

Inhibitory control develops rather late in ontogenesis since it depends on the development of the prefrontal cortex. There are contradictory data on its relationship with creativity at different stages of ontogenesis. One of the most unstudied age periods is early adolescence. It is considered an age when a child has not yet mastered the subtleties of speech expression. The purpose of the study was to reveal the connections between creativity and inhibitory control in young adolescents. Creativity is assessed with two tests: J. Gilford’s test and E.P. Torrance’s test. The go/go and go/no-go paradigms are used to assess inhibitory control. In the first case, subjects are presented with stimuli with a fractally organized structure. A reaction was required for each stimulus. The second case requires not responding to one of the stimuli to which one had previously developed a response. Each series consists of two identical parts. Data processing is carried out using SPSS software. The study sample consists of 158 students in grades 6-7 of which 61 are boys and 97 are girls. The result of regression analysis shows that none of the parameters of J. Guilford’s test are related to the parameters of inhibitory control. We attribute this to the fact that the test is verbal and adolescents find it difficult to find original solutions in the lexical domain. Overall score and flexibility (according to E.P. Torrance’s test) are related to the efficiency of inhibitory processes in the second part of the go/no-go test and to the quality of grasping the fractal structure of the sensory signal flow.