Eighty-nine college students with varying levels of divergent thinking aptitude participated in a study focusing on the processing of concrete and abstract stimuli. The subjects were administered three divergent thinking instruments. Their processing of concrete and abstract stimuli was studied in two separate free-response tasks. It was hypothesized that free-response tasks would reveal shifts in abstraction level toward more concreteness of overt free associations to an abstract stimulus, along with self-reports of greater imagery mediation, on the part of subjects with higher divergent thinking aptitude. The results supported the hypothesis, suggesting greater flexibility between imaginal and verbal coding systems in high divergent thinking persons than in less divergent thinking persons. (Author/FL)