The identification of some creative thinking parameters common to the artistic and musical personality.

Abstract

Summary. The intent of this study was to explore several segments of divergent intelligence, visual stimulus complexity as a cognitive style, and auditory acuity, that presumably characterise the artistically expressive person. The sample population was comprised of 34 visual artists, 32 musical artists, and a normative group of 30 undergraduate university students. Between‐group differences were examined by way of ANOVA, multiple discriminant function analysis, and then by a principal components solution (with varimax rotation). Preference for visual stimulus complexity was upheld as a cognitive style dimension common to both artistic and musical personalities. Substantive evidence was found to confirm the ‘divergent auditory figural memory factor’ (DFS‐A) posited by Guilford in his SI model. As conjectured, visual artists displayed a superior propensity on the triadic divergent abilities subsumed under fluency, flexibility, and originality of thinking, while musical and control subjects were undifferentiated on these cognitive parameters. More importantly, the heightened auditory acuity and aesthetic judgment of visual artists over that of controls, as measured by the pilot auditory discrimination test, indicates the existence of a general intersensory factor among creative artists. Similarly, the musician's sensibility and attraction to complex abstract imagery beyond that of their non‐artistic peers further strengthens the notion of possible shared perceptual features by creative individuals across discretesensory modalities. Overall, the selected variables were shown to be reliable predictors for identifying the artistically gifted individual.