Promoting Creativity in the Middle Grades Language Arts Classroom

People often think it will be hard for artificial intelligence (AI) systems to copy creativity because it is a complicated and important part of human intelligence. Generative AI, which tries to make new and useful things, has shown promise in being able to copy creative processes. However, generative AI systems that are already in use often have trouble making results that are truly original. This is mostly because there isn't a clear scientific framework to help people be creative. We present a new mathematical model to improve creativity in creative AI systems in this work. Our model is based on the ideas of lateral and convergent thinking, which are important parts of how people think creatively. Divergent thinking means coming up with many ideas or solutions, while convergent thinking means picking the best ones and making them even better. To put our model into action, we come up with the idea of a "creativity score," which measures how new and useful the results are. The creativity score is determined by looking at a number of things, such as the variety of outputs, how different they are from current solutions, and how useful they are for fixing the problem at hand. Finding the right balance between divergent and convergent thinking is one of the hardest parts of making generative AI systems more creative. Divergent thinking is important for coming up with many ideas, but convergent thinking is needed to pick out the best ones and make them even better. This problem is solved by our model, which uses both divergent and convergent thought. To make sure our model works, we test it on different creative AI tasks, such as making images and writing text. Our results show that our model can greatly improve the creativity of generative AI systems, resulting in more varied, unique, and useful outputs.

This study investigated the effects of the first season of Sesame Street on readiness in kindergarten children. Metropolitan Readiness Test (MRT) scores of children from one school district, who had attended kindergarten in the two years prior to the first broadcast season, were compared with the scores of children who had attended kindergarten in 1970, the year of the first season of Sesame Street. In each comparison total MRT scores and the six subtest scores were analyzed separately. There was a significant difference found in favor of the 1970 group on the Alphabet Subtest. There were no significant differences in favor of this group found on any of the other subtests nor on the total test. No significant interaction was found between age and exposure to Sesame Street. A significant interaction effect in favor of the 1970 boys was found on the Alphabet Subtest. The scores of children from an advantaged community were found to be significantly higher on the Alphabet Subtest in 1970 than the Alphabet Subtest scores of similar advantaged groups from previous years. The scores of the kindergarten children of 1970 from the summer Head Start program were not significantly different, on any of the subtests nor on the total test, than the scores of the summer Head Start groups from previous years.

Encouraging creativity in teams, not just in individuals, is necessary for today's business environment. However, in the previous studies aiming to enhance Team Performance, it is not clear how to combine the team members' creative thinking. The purpose of this study is to indicate the points in combining the four kinds of creative thinking of team members to enhance Team Creativity and Team Performance. Four kinds of creative thinking are divergent, convergent, experiential, and rational thinking. We visualized the recognition of the behavior of each individual and other team members by a method "Creative Thinking Map" and conducted a survey three times to graduate school students participating in a four months team collaboration project. The project reflects the real business situation since many students are involved in business activities besides their researches. We analyzed the survey result and identified two suggestion points. First is to include members who self-evaluate themselves to have sufficient "Rational" and "Divergent" thinking in the team from the initial phase. Secondly, we suggest each member to keep making efforts to control "Divergent" and "Convergent" thinking according to situations of the team and to be evaluated by other team members at the final phase of the project.

The Frontage of Creativity and Mathematical Creativity

Our study investigated the role of creativity in second language (L2) speech production using a picture narrative and an open‐ended argumentative task administered to 60 Japanese‐speaking learners of English. Following recent findings in the field of psychology, the participants’ creativity was assessed in terms of cognitive dimensions (divergent thinking fluency, convergent thinking) and a personality dimension (openness to experience). Participants’ speaking performance was analyzed using a set of complexity, accuracy, fluency and discourse measures. The results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that both divergent thinking fluency and convergent thinking played a role in the cohesion of speech (indexed by the frequency of connectives) in both speaking tasks, while only in the argumentative task did divergent thinking fluency contribute to an increase in the amount of information (indexed by the total number of words produced). Meanwhile, openness to experience was found to enhance syntactic and lexical complexity only in the picture narrative task. These findings suggest that speakers’ creativity is linked to syntactic and lexical sophistication and discourse aspects of L2 oral performance, all of which are related to conceptualization processes in L2 speech production.

Executive functions and divergent thinking in young adults: Evidence from individual differences and cognitive training studies

Creativity, specifically divergent thinking, has been shown to benefit from unrestrained walking. Despite these findings, it is not clear if it is the lack of restriction that leads to the improvement. Our goal was to explore the effects of motor restrictions on divergent thinking for different movement states. In addition, we assessed whether spontaneous eye blinks, which are linked to motor execution, also predict performance. In experiment 1, we compared the performance in Guilford’s alternate uses task (AUT) during walking vs. sitting, and analysed eye blink rates during both conditions. We found that AUT scores were higher during walking than sitting. Albeit eye blinks differed significantly between movement conditions (walking vs. sitting) and task phase (baseline vs. thinking vs. responding), they did not correlate with task performance. In experiment 2 and 3, participants either walked freely or in a restricted path, or sat freely or fixated on a screen. When the factor restriction was explicitly modulated, the effect of walking was reduced, while restriction showed a significant influence on the fluency scores. Importantly, we found a significant correlation between the rate of eye blinks and creativity scores between subjects, depending on the restriction condition. Our study shows a movement state-independent effect of restriction on divergent thinking. In other words, similar to unrestrained walking, unrestrained sitting also improves divergent thinking. Importantly, we discuss a mechanistic explanation of the effect of restriction on divergent thinking based on the increased size of the focus of attention and the consequent bias towards flexibility.

The current study examined how parental cognitive stimulation, emotional support, and intrusiveness measured during children's prekindergarten year were related to children's verbal and nonverbal abilities 1 year later. Participants were 110 Head Start children and their caregivers from primarily rural and low-income backgrounds. Analysis of children's scores on the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities confirmed the predictive utility of cognitive stimulation, emotional support, and intrusive behavior for perceptual scores (20% of the unique variance) as well as the predictive utility of emotional support and intrusive behavior for verbal scores (15% of the unique variance). Parental emotional support during guidance of problem solving (positive feedback) explained statistically significant unique variance in children's perceptual scores beyond other measures of emotional support. Cognitive stimulation moderated the relation between positive feedback and perceptual scores. Although other syntactic forms of maternal utterances such as commands did not explain statistically significant unique variance in children's scores beyond emotional support and intrusive behavior, mothers' questions did. Specific policy implications of the effects are discussed.

In this paper, we describe the design and the methodological framework of a Language Creativity Test (LCT), whose aim is to assess linguistic creativity across humans and Large Language Models (LLMs). Based on recent research on human and computational creativity, this LCT evaluates the capacity to generate novel, meaningful, and contextually appropriate language. For human participants, the test measures imaginative linguistic performance, including metaphor generation, neologism creation, and flexible word use, which are considered key indicators of divergent thinking and linguistic fluency. For LLMs, the same tasks serve to determine their creative language generation and test the extent to which they go beyond learned patterns to produce original expressions. Thus, the LCT described here enables direct comparison of creative language use between biological and artificial systems, offering insights into how creativity manifests across different types of intelligence.

The effectiveness of poetry activities combined with experience in nature on kindergarten children's language expression and language creativity

The purpose of this research is to study the level of differences between divergent thinking and normative behavior of teenagers in both early and late stages of adolescence. The data analysis is based on the study of the social situation of teenagers who developed divergent thinking. The research was conducted in the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia, at specialized lyceums. A hundred teenagers (aged 13–16) participated in the survey and were divided into two equal age groups: younger and older teenagers, each group included 50 individuals. The interviews with teenagers were conducted according to ethical principles, including voluntary participation, signing of informed voluntary consent forms, and maintaining confidentiality. Over the course of the empirical study, the adolescents completed three tests aimed at identifying the development of conformity in normative situations and studying divergent thinking. The results showed a difference between younger and older adolescents. The analysis indicated that conformity in behavior and divergent thinking were more frequently displayed in younger adolescents, while qualitative transformation of divergent thinking occurred in older adolescents. These transformations may be associated with changes in the social situation of adolescent development and biological restructuring. Therefore, this study sheds light on the formation of creative thinking in teenagers in the socio-cultural environment.

Divergent thinking (DT) as one component of creativity is the ability to search for multiple solutions to a single problem and is reliably tested with the Alternative Uses Task (AUT). DT depends on activity in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), a prefrontal region that has also been associated with inhibitory control (IC). Experimentally manipulating IC through transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) led to alterations in DT. Here, we aimed at further examining such potential mediating effects of IC on DT (measured as flexibility, fluency, and originality in the AUT) by modulating IC tDCS. Participants received either cathodal tDCS (c-tDCS) of the left IFG coupled with anodal tDCS (a-tDCS) of the right IFG (L−R + ; N = 19), or the opposite treatment (L + R−; N = 21). We hypothesized that L + R− stimulation would enhance IC assessed with the Go NoGo task (GNGT), and that facilitated IC would result in lower creativity scores. The reversed stimulation arrangement (i.e., L− R +) should result in higher creativity scores. We found that tDCS only affected the originality component of the AUT but not flexibility or fluency. We also found no effects on IC, and thus, the mediation effect of IC could not be confirmed. However, we observed a moderation effect: inhibition of left and facilitation of right IFG (L−R +) resulted in enhanced flexibility and originality scores, only when IC performance was also improved. We conclude that inducing a right-to-left gradient in IFG activity by tDCS is efficient in enhancing DT, but only under conditions where tDCS is sufficient to alter IC performance as well.

Results remain mixed regarding the effects of incubation tasks on divergent thinking, a type of creativity, generally assessed via the Unusual Uses Task (UUT). Using a within-subjects design, we compared 64 participants’ performance on the UUT, after four different incubation tasks: copy a simple painting, copy a complex painting, 0-back-task, and rest. We hypothesized that an arts-related activity during incubation (here: copy a painting) would boost subsequent creativity. Five different creativity scores were computed from the raw UUT data, and we provide a step-by-step guide for how to compute these: fluency, flexibility, originality, subjective creativity, and usefulness. Creativity was only modulated by sex; women outperformed men on creative fluency. No other variables, nor the incubations, modulated any of participants’ creativity scores. A within-group comparison showed that the unusual uses of our all-Iranian participants were more useful than unique, echoing previous work suggesting differences between Eastern and Western conceptions of creativity.

The paper examines the specific knowledge universities transfer to industry, reflecting to creative industry needs. As results shows, the most asked alumni competences should be tacit knowledge and divergent thinking. Divergent thinking influence the creativity. Creativity is often defined as the ability to develop new and useful ideas, but in deep literature review, we can see few irregularities and different definitions of creativity. The paper also evaluates the importance of creativity from business environment point of view and from the creative industry perspective and creative firm owners. As point of view. Another key finding is, that to educate creative people will be one of the key competitive advantage, because mainly the ability to create and disseminate knowledge is often at the heart of the organization's competitive advantage not only in creative industry, but in transport industry as well.

Creativity is commonly assessed using divergent thinking tasks, which measure the fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration of participant output on a variety of different tasks. This study assesses the degree to which creativity can be identified based on linguistic features of participants’ language while completing collaborative divergent thinking tasks. To this end, 78 participants’ conversational dialogs (i.e., 39 dyads) within a chat environment were collected while completing three open-ended problem-solving tasks. Expert raters scored the dialogs in terms of fluency, flexibility, elaboration, and originality, as well as three types of creative language (metaphor and simile, humor, and word play). Factor analyses indicated that these scores captured two main constructs (creativity and elaboration). The linguistic features of the participants’ language (captured computationally using natural language processing tools) accounted for significant amounts of variation in both the creativity (R2 = .640) and elaboration (R2 = .550) scores within linear mixed effect (LME) models. These results highlight specific linguistic features that can be used to explain large amounts of variance in constructs related to creativity.