Accounting for Creativity Within a Psychologically Realistic Cognitive Architecture

Abstract

Creativity research, computational or otherwise, can benefit from a detailed understanding of human creative problem solving. The psychological processes of human creative problem solving have been tackled using computational modeling and simulation based on the CLARION cognitive architecture. CLARION, in general, attempts to provide a unified explanation of a wide range of psychological phenomena using five basic principles. By using these CLARION principles, the Explicit-Implicit Interaction (EII) theory of creative problem solving was derived, which provides a unified framework for understanding creative problem solving. A list of phenomena that can be accounted for by the EII theory and simulated using the CLARION cognitive architecture is presented. This work represents a step in the development of unified process-based theories of creativity encompassing incubation, insight, and various other related phenomena. Beyond EII, the roles of motivation, personality, emotion, and social interaction in creativity may also be explored using CLARION.