Abstract
Creativity refers to the capability to catch original and valuable ideas and solutions. It involves different processes. In this study the extent to which visual creativity is related to cognitive processes underlying visual mental imagery was investigated. Fifty college students (25 women) carried out: the Creative Synthesis Task, which measures the ability to produce creative objects belonging to a given category (originality, synthesis and transformation scores of pre-inventive forms, and originality and practicality scores of inventions were computed); an adaptation of Clark’s Drawing Ability Test, which measures the ability to produce actual creative artworks (graphic ability, esthetic, and creativity scores of drawings were assessed) and three mental imagery tasks that investigate the three main cognitive processes involved in visual mental imagery: generation, inspection and transformation. Vividness of imagery and verbalizer–visualizer cognitive style were also measured using questionnaires. Correlation analysis revealed that all measures of the creativity tasks positively correlated with the image transformation imagery ability; practicality of inventions negatively correlated with vividness of imagery; originality of inventions positively correlated with the visualization cognitive style. However, regression analysis confirmed the predictive role of the transformation imagery ability only for the originality score of inventions and for the graphic ability and esthetic scores of artistic drawings; on the other hand, the visualization cognitive style predicted the originality of inventions, whereas the vividness of imagery predicted practicality of inventions. These results are consistent with the notion that visual creativity is domain- and task-specific.
Highlights
Creativity is a mysterious aspect of human thinking
This study was aimed at investigating the extent to which dimensions of visual creativity, measured in terms of creative objects production and artistic drawings making, and imagery components, such as vividness of imagery, the strategy to use preferentially images and cognitive processes involved in imagery are related
The correlation analysis revealed that all dimensions of pre-inventive forms, inventions and artistic drawings positively correlated with the transformation imagery ability measured by means of the Paper Folding Test (PFT), meaning that the higher the ability to construct pre-inventive forms, original and practical inventions and to make creative artistic drawings, the higher the ability to mentally manipulate spatial forms
Summary
Creativity is a mysterious aspect of human thinking. The general characteristics shared by the creative products are hard to recognize. Creativity plays a crucial role on human thought, being involved in different activities, such as Creativity and Imagery problem-solving (Basadur et al, 2000), scientific progress (Klahr and Simon, 1999), verbal thought (Fink and Neubauer, 2006), visual art (van Leeuwen et al, 1999), dance (Fink et al, 2009), music (Olivetti Belardinelli, 2002), and so forth. This multicomponential aspect of creativity opens to the issue of domainspecificity. Palmiero et al (2010) showed that visual creativity is more domain- and task-specific than verbal creativity
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