de Chantal, P.-L., Leblanc, M.-C., Houde-Labrecque, C., Labrie, C.

Cognitive control is known to support divergent thinking in adults, but findings in children remain mixed. This study examinedthe association between cognitive control—measured as a composite score from two executive function tasks—and verbal diver-gent thinking in 120 French-speaking school-aged children (aged 10 to 12 years). Originality and fluency scores on the AlternateUses 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 differentpatterns of association with cognitive control, which was more strongly related to originality in the AUT. This task-specific ef-fect was consistent across both AI- and human-based scoring methods. Additional analyses revealed that children with greatercognitive control generated more original ideas earlier in the tasks, with a gradual decline over time. This temporal patternremained consistent across both tasks. In contrast, fluency was less consistently related to cognitive control and did not exhibittask-specific effects. Together, these findings provide further evidence that cognitive control plays a role in preadolescents’ cre-ative performance, while also highlighting possible task-specific demands that carry important implications for understandingthe development and assessment of divergent thinking.