Abstract: The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of novelty seeking trait level on creative behavior performance, and to explore the role of semantic network in this process. To this end, the study used the Alternate Uses Test (AUT), the Chinese Compound Remote Association Test (CCRAT) and the Chinese word pair correlation judgment task of two-character words, to compare the performance of individuals with high and low novelty seeking trait level in different creative tasks and the word correlation judgment task. Taking Novelty Seeking Scale as the tool, the two groups of high and low novelty seeking trait, each had 32 participants, were picked out from 300 randomly selected college students. All subjects completed AUT and CCRAT first ( the two task were balanced in order among subjects in both groups), and then judgment task. The answers in AUT were scored on novelty and suitability, as for the other two tasks, the accuracy and response time were recorded. The results showed that: (1) the novelty scores of AUT was significantly higher in the high novelty seeking trait group than in the low trait group, and there was no significant difference in the suitability scores between the two groups. (2) As for the CCRAT, there was no significant difference in the accuracy rate and response time between the two groups with high or low novelty seeking trait. (3) On the Chinese word pair correlation judgment task, the accuracy for high relevance words is significantly higher than that for low related words, the response time for high relevance words is significantly shorter than that for low related words, and the interaction between the novelty seeking trait level and the semantic correlation of words was significant on the response time. For the low correlation word pair, the response time of the high novelty seeking trait group was significantly lower than that of the low novelty seeking trait group; while for the high correlation word pair, the difference between the two groups was not significant. (4) The mediating effect analysis shows that the response time of low-correlation words’ judgement plays a partial mediating role between the novelty seeking trait level and the novelty score of AUT. Taking these results together, the study found that: (1) High novelty seeking individuals showed higher novelty in AUT, but had same performance with low novelty seeking individuals in CCRAT; (2) Individuals with different novelty seeking trait levels have differences in the response time of low-relevant word pairs, high novelty seeking individuals reacted more quickly; (3) The semantic network plays a partial intermediary role in the novelty seeking to influence the performance of creative behavior, which is reflected in the response time of low-relevant word pairs. Innovations of the research:(1) The previous studies mostly used a single task to measure the performance of creative behaviors, that may ignore some important component of creating procedure. This study used two different tasks to explore the performance of creative behaviors. (2) The previous researches, which explored the role of semantic network in the procedure that novelty seeking promotes the performance of creative behaviors, are mainly based on theoretical speculation and lack of empirical evidence. Through empirical research on the internal mechanism of this role, this study explains the role of semantic network in novelty seeking promoting the performance of creative behaviors.

Key words: Novelty seeking, Semantic network, Creative behavior performance, Semantic activation speed

摘要： 研究采用物品多用途任务、中文复合远距离联想任务和汉语双字词词对相关性判断任务，考察新颖性寻求特质水平对创造性表现的影响，探明语义网络在其中的作用。结果发现：（1）高新颖性寻求个体在物品多用途任务中有更高的新颖性得分，而在中文复合远距离联想任务中与低新颖性寻求个体表现一致；（2）在低相关词对判断时，高新颖性寻求个体反应时更短；（3）低相关词对判断反应时在新颖性寻求对创造性行为表现的影响中起部分中介作用。本研究结果预示着，新颖性寻求特质有利于个体建构形成能快速激活远距离信息的语义网络，进而促进其创造性行为表现。

关键词: 新颖性寻求, 语义网络, 创造性行为表现, 语义激活速度