Abstract: Based on two experiments, this research investigates the role of knowledge base in University students' creative thinking. Experiment 1 uses the amount of English vocabulary to represent the general knowledge base and English writing as the creative task. Research findings show that the amount of English vocabulary has significant impact on the creativity in English writing. The larger English vocabulary the students have, the more creative their writings are. The amount of English vocabulary contributes to both novelty and appropriateness in English writings. Experiment 2 employs the test scores of some psychology subjects as well as the years of studying psychology to represent the domain-specific knowledge base, and the psychological research design as the creative tasks. The findings indicate that when the test scores of psychology subject is used as the indicator of knowledge base, it is not significantly correlated with the creativity in research design. However, as the indicator of knowledge base, the years of studying psychology has significant positive effects on both the novelty and appropriateness of the task performance. And these effects are found bigger in the more difficult design tasks.

Key words: knowledge base, creative thinking, novelty, appropriateness