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Yvain comments on Deliberate and spontaneous creativity - Less Wrong
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I've often observed that my ability to think creatively disappears after spending enough time having the noncreative normal way ground into me.
For example, I remember my first day on a job I noticed a bunch of ways the company was doing things inefficiently and could be better. After doing it the company's way for a year or two, the company's system seemed so natural that it didn't seem like there was anything wrong with it. But when I remembered some of the things I'd told people that first day, they still seemed like good ideas, even though I was no longer able to spontaneously generate them anymore.
Likewise, I think being in a field for a long time etches the paradigm into your brain so deeply that it inhibits your ability to think outside of it.
I think this probably works alongside any changes that might happen simply due to age. I'd like to see a study comparing the creativity of old people who are just joining a new field, versus relatively young people who have been in the field their whole lives.
A lot of people seem to be creative in less technical fields later in life after switching into them from a more technical field in which their creativity had somewhat dried up.
If you're talking about the creativity that works within a paradigm, then chronological age doesn't matter - it's only the amount of time that you've spent studying the field that matters. A person who enters a field at 50 shows a similar career trajectory than a person who enters it at 20.
If you're talking about paradigm-busting creativity, then I'm not aware of other studies that would have made the inside/outside-paradigm distinction. (Which isn't to say that they might not exist, of course.)