This study aims to examine how the timing of artificial intelligence (AI) integration during group brainstorming activities affects the creativity and ideation of participants. Undergraduate student participants will be randomly allocated into teams of four to complete a structured 12-minute brainstorming task. The study utilizes a three-group experimental design to compare three conditions: no AI access, AI access from the outset of the session, and AI access introduced halfway through the session. The standardized generative AI tool used is ChatGPT Pro. The creative output produced by each group will be evaluated by a panel of independent expert judges using the Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT).
Enrolled as a student in the designated summer research program
Able to provide voluntary informed consent
Proficient in reading and communicating in English (required to engage with the scenarios and the artificial intelligence tool)
None
Parallel
Artificial Intelligence First (Early Integration)
BehavioralThe introduction of ChatGPT Pro (GPT-4o architecture) at the beginning (minute 0) of a 12-minute group brainstorming session. A single prompt containing the scenario is submitted to generate an initial set of ideas, with no further back-and-forth dialogue permitted. This single artificial intelligence output serves as the baseline for the team's subsequent human ideation.
Artificial Intelligence Last (Late Integration)
BehavioralThe introduction of ChatGPT Pro (GPT-4o architecture) at the midpoint (minute 6) of a 12-minute group brainstorming session. A single prompt containing both the scenario and the team's already-generated human ideas is submitted, with no further back-and-forth dialogue permitted. This single artificial intelligence output is used to guide the team's human ideation for the remaining 6 minutes.
Creativity Score of the Selected Best Idea
The primary outcome is the mean expert creativity rating assigned to each team's top idea, across each of the 9 sessions, as assessed by independent judges using the Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT). Higher average scores denote a more creative output, while lower scores denote a less creative output.
Overall Creativity Score of Full Idea List
The collective creative quality of the entire list of ideas generated by the team during the session, evaluated by independent expert judges using the Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT).
Number of Ideas Generated During the 12-Minute Session
The total number of ideas generated (fluency) will be reported with the explicit methodological limitation that AI generation speed inherently outpaces human typing speed. Fluency will be analysed purely observationally, as the 12-minute constraint does not control for the mechanical advantage of the AI tool.
Qualitative Resemblance of the Team's Output to Typical AI-Generated Responses
This will be subjectively assessed by the expert judges on a 1-5 scale (anchored from 'strongly AI-typical' to 'strongly human'), independent of the CAT creativity evaluation.
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