Different Aspects Of Creativity Research Articles

Creative pursuits for mental health and well-being.

This clinical practice guide traces the role of art and creativity in mental health and well-being. This is a difficult task since the evidence from research spans a wide variety of fine art forms and different aspects of creativity. Hence, we have tried to combine both evidence-based research as well as our clinical experience and practice in the field of arts in utilizing creative pursuits as a life skill and a well-being initiative. The focus of the guidelines is preventive and promotional with relevance to mental health. We also hope that this should be a beginning in encouraging psychiatrists in India to use art-based therapies in their clinical practice. This will further our knowledge of how arts can be a therapeutic intervention as well as a well-being tool. It will also build on the evidence base on how art impacts our mental health. Creativity is undeniably one of humanity's most valued traits; the capacity to produce new ideas, innovations, and art is perhaps the most striking characteristic of the human brain. "Art" has evolved, and what is art, has been redefined over human history. The domain of "art" refers to the diverse range of activities that often use imagination to express ideas and feelings. Whilst the boundaries of what constitutes art or creativity may sometimes appear esoteric, we still can identify a range of creative pursuits: visual, musical, verbal, literary, dance, or creative pursuits related to our body movements and a range of forms of newer integrated forms and those that use technology are recognized as art forms. As in most ancient traditions, in India, we have a plethora of fine art traditions many of which have a highly systematic practice around their learning. We believe this is an asset that we need to nurture and celebrate. We begin by tracing the footsteps of Indian fine arts being a mental health promotional tool in ancient India. We then proceed to describe the scope of creative pursuits for different populations and its relevance in school and child mental health. We offer suggestions as to how creative art forms can be utilized in a practical way in daily life, schools, and care of the elderly. It is to be noted that the entire focus here is the process of creativity and not the completed product or the achievement related to the same. Hence, it is relevant to each one of us and to anyone who wishes to be healthy.

BCI Applications to Creativity: Review and Future Directions, from little-c to C2

BCI devices are increasingly being used to create interactive interfaces between users and their own psychophysiological signals. Over the years, these systems have seen strong development as they can enable people with limited mobility to make certain decisions to alter their environment. Additionally, their portability and ease of use have allowed a field of research to flourish for the study of cognitive and emotional processes in natural settings. The study of creativity, especially little creativity (little-c), is one example, although the results of this cutting-edge research are often poorly systematized. The purpose of the present paper, therefore, was to conduct a scoping review to describe and systematize the various studies that have been conducted on the application potential of BCI to the field of creativity. Twenty-two papers were selected that collect information on different aspects of creativity, including clinical applications; art experience in settings with high ecological validity; BCI for creative content creation, and participants’ engagement. Critical issues and potentialities of this promising area of study are also presented. Implications for future developments towards multi-brain creativity settings and C2 are discussed.

Conceptual and Measurement Specificity are Key: The Case of Creativity and Emotions

ABSTRACT How do we know what we know about creativity? This article argues for the importance of specification in defining different aspects of creativity (e.g., creative potential vs. creative behavior) and how they are measured (self-reported vs. externally judged, length of assessment) when making conclusions about creativity-relevant traits and processes. This methodological and conceptual point is illustrated with examples from the study of creativity and emotion. The conclusions about creativity and emotion will depend on specific measures used because different measures capture psychologically distinct aspects of creativity. The article focuses on measures of three aspects of creativity – performance on divergent thinking tests, self-perceived creativity, and reports of creative behavior and achievement. Specific emotion-related predictors are most relevant to different aspects of creativity based on the nature of predictors and outcomes and the match between them. For example, emotion traits describe typical ways of feeling across time and situations and are best suited to predict creative behavior and achievement accrued over long periods of time (e.g., from a year to a lifetime). Without specifying aspects of creativity or referring to creativity as a unitary construct, conclusions drawn can be unhelpful or misleading. Implications for future research are discussed.

Characterizing Creative Thinking and Creative Achievements in Relation to Symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Previous research on ADHD and ASD has mainly focused on the deficits associated with these conditions, but there is also evidence for strengths. Unfortunately, our understanding of potential strengths in neurodevelopmental conditions is limited. One particular strength, creativity, has been associated with both ADHD and ASD. However, the distinct presentations of both conditions beg the question whether ADHD and ASD associate with the same or different aspects of creativity. Therefore, the current study investigated the links between ADHD and ASD symptoms, creative thinking abilities, and creative achievements. To investigate the spectrum of ADHD and ASD symptoms, self-reported ADHD and ASD symptoms, convergent (Remote Associations Test) and divergent thinking (Alternative Uses Task) and creative achievements (Creative Achievement Questionnaire) were assessed in a self-reportedly healthy sample of adults (n = 470). We performed correlation analysis to investigate the relation between ADHD/ASD symptoms and creativity measures. In a second phase of analysis, data from an adult ADHD case-control study (n = 151) were added to investigate the association between ADHD symptoms and divergent thinking in individuals with and without a diagnosis of ADHD.Our analysis revealed that having more ADHD symptoms in the general population was associated with higher scores on all the outcome measures for divergent thinking (fluency, flexibility, and originality), but not for convergent thinking. Individuals with an ADHD diagnosis in the case-control sample also scored higher on measures of divergent thinking. Combining data of the population based and case-control studies showed that ADHD symptoms predict divergent thinking up to a certain level of symptoms. No significant associations were found between the total number of ASD symptoms and any of the creativity measures. However, explorative analyses showed interesting links between the ASD subdomains of problems with imagination and symptoms that relate to social difficulties. Our findings showed a link between ADHD symptoms and divergent thinking abilities that plateaus in the clinical spectrum of symptoms. For ASD symptoms, no relation was found with creativity measures. Increasing the knowledge about positive phenotypes associated with neurodevelopmental conditions and their symptom dimensions might aid psychoeducation, decrease stigmatization and improve quality of life of individuals living with such conditions.

Spontaneous or Deliberate: The Dual Influence of Mind Wandering on Creative Incubation

ABSTRACTTwo experiments examined the dual influence of mind wandering (MW) on the incubation of both deliberate and spontaneous modes of creativity. Specifically, using a modified version of Sustained Attention Response Task as the incubation task, this study assessed whether taking a break from a creative task and engaging in either an MW‐allowed task or an MW‐prevented task can exert differential effects on different aspects of creativity. Results showed that after engaging in an incubation task that allowed MW rather than prevented MW, participants generated ideas more flexibly but less persistently in the subsequent divergent thinking tasks, and were more likely to solve creative insight problems through intuitive insight but not systematic analysis. The results suggest that MW during incubation may simultaneously facilitate the spontaneous mode of creativity while suppressing the deliberate mode of creativity. These findings also indicate that creativity must be parsed into different subtypes in order to identify more specific ways to enhance creativity.

Gender Differences in the Distribution of Creativity Scores: Domain-Specific Patterns in Divergent Thinking and Creative Problem Solving.

The present study examined gender differences in the distribution of creative abilities through the lens of the greater male variability hypothesis, which postulated that men showed greater interindividual variability than women in both physical and psychological attributes (Ellis, 1894/1934). Two hundred and six (51.9% female) undergraduate students in Hong Kong completed two creativity measures that evaluated different aspects of creativity, including: (a) a divergent thinking test that aimed to assess idea generation and (b) a creative problem-solving test that aimed to assess restructuring ability. The present findings extended the research of greater male variability in creativity by showing that men generally exhibited greater variance than women in the overall distribution of the creativity scores in both divergent thinking and creative problem solving, despite trivial gender differences in mean scores. The findings further enriched the discourse of the greater male variability hypothesis by showing interesting domain-specific gendered patterns: (1) greater male variability was more likely to occur in figural forms of creativity, with larger effect sizes, when compared to the variability in verbal forms of creativity; and (2) mixed gendered patterns were found in the upper tails of the creativity score distribution with respect to the verbal domain but not the figural one, despite greater male representation being consistently observed in the lower tail of the distribution. Possible underlying mechanisms and implications were discussed.

Differential Effects of Schizotypy Dimensions on Creative Personality and Creative Products

ABSTRACT Positive implications of schizotypal personality have been discussed in the literature in the last few years, higher creativity being one of them. Specifically, positive and negative schizotypy dimensions have been respectively related to higher and lower creativity levels. However, a considerable amount of null associations between these two constructs have also been reported. This heterogeneity could be due to the multidimensionality of both constructs. The aim of this study is to go deeper into the general relationship between creativity and schizotypy, disentangling the associations between specific dimensions of these two constructs. We assessed schizotypy in a sample of 154 volunteers. They also filled out creative personality and creative products questionnaires. Regression analyses showed no effect of scores in the positive dimension of schizotypy over either of the two creativity measures. Interestingly, lower scores in the negative dimension were associated with more creative products, whereas lower scores in the disorganized dimension were associated with a more creative personality. Our results point toward the need to use assessment tools tapping into the different aspects of creativity and to take into account the multidimensional nature of schizotypal personality in order to clarify the relationship between these two complex constructs.

The incremental validity of implicit measures of creativity for creative achievement

In search of a more holistic assessment, creativity researchers recently employed implicit measures which capture different aspects of creativity, including personality and attitude that operate on an implicit level. However, little is understood regarding their overlap with determinants of creative achievement. This study examined the incremental validity of two implicit measures, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and the Conditional Reasoning Test for Creative Personality (CRT-CP) in predicting creative achievements. Analyses based on a sample of 167 college students showed a convergent validity between the IAT and explicit creative personality, but not between the CRT-CP and explicit creative personality nor between the IAT and the CRT-CP. Regarding incremental validity, only CRT-CP revealed evidence for an incremental validity in predicting individuals' creative achievement over and above explicit creative personality. Results are discussed in terms of the application of implicit measurement techniques.

Creativity and Affective Temperament in Artistic and Non‐artistic Students: Different Temperaments are Related to Different Aspects of Creativity

AbstractThe relationship between creativity and temperament has been well documented in studies with professional artists. This also pertains to affective temperaments which constitute the vulnerability to affective disorders. However, less is known about the contribution of particular temperaments to specific components of creativity, for example, ideational fluency, or originality of thinking. The aim of the present study was to assess affective temperaments and creativity in artistic and non‐artistic students. Ninety (39 artistic and 51 non‐artistic) students were enrolled in the study. Affective temperaments were evaluated by means of TEMPS‐A questionnaire. Creativity was measured with BWAS test assessing the originality of thinking and a sample of tasks derived from BIS battery, assessing ideational fluency. Artistic students showed higher rates of cyclothymic temperament. They also outperformed non‐artistic students in both domains of creativity. The originality of thinking correlated positively with the level of cyclothymic temperament, whereas ideational fluency was positively related to hyperthymic temperament. Ideational fluency also correlated with the level of parental education. Results indicate that creativity is related to temperaments underlying predisposition to bipolar affective disorder; however, different temperaments are related to different aspects of creativity.

Chain free association, creativity, and the default mode network

Research on creativity shows that creative thinking entails both executive (controlled) and associative (spontaneous) processes. Yet standard creativity tasks cannot reliably isolate these two types of cognitive processes, making it difficult to understand the relation between the two and the roles of their corresponding brain networks in creative cognition. In this study we used a behavioral and neuroimaging approach in an effort to establish chain free association (FA) tasks as a relevant method for directly investigating spontaneous associative thinking and its role in creative cognition. We further examined the relation between performance on such tasks and intelligence. Participants completed common creativity tasks and then underwent fMRI scanning while producing FA chains. Instructions to participants that emphasized the spontaneous nature of the task, coupled with proper control conditions that were balanced for difficulty, enabled us to uncover spontaneous (as opposed to controlled) processes. To examine whether behavioral measures that can be derived from FA chains (associative fluency, associative flexibility and semantic remoteness between associations) are indicative of unconstrained spontaneous associative processing and are related to different aspects of verbal creativity and intelligence, scores on these measures were correlated with scores on creativity tasks and on an intelligence task, and with brain activity. We found that: (1) the Default Mode Network (DMN), a network involved in self-generated and internally-directed thought, was more involved in chain FA than in other tasks expected to reflect more controlled forms of internally-directed thought, suggesting that the DMN involvement might be related to the unconstrained spontaneous nature of chain FA. Higher involvement of the left IFG, SFG, MFG under chain FA was also revealed; (2) higher scores on different behavioral measures from FA chains were related to higher activation of the DMN and to reduced activation of the left IFG, a major node in the executive function network; (3) behavioral measures from FA chains were correlated with different aspects of creative performance but not with intelligence. Taken together, these findings lend support to the hypothesis that chain FA involves associative spontaneous thinking. They further suggest that behavioral measures derived from chain FA could indicate patterns of unconstrained associative thinking, related to reduced cognitive control, that are relevant for creative ideation, and might be able to serve as a measure of these patterns.

Epilepsy treatment and creativity.

Creativity can be defined as the ability to understand, develop, and express, in a systematic fashion, novel orderly relationships. It is sometimes difficult to separate cognitive skills requisite for the creative process from the drive that generates unique new ideas and associations. Epilepsy itself may affect the creative process. The treatment of epilepsy and its comorbidities, by altering or disrupting the same neural networks through antiseizure drugs (ASDs), treatment of epilepsy comorbidities, ablative surgery, or neurostimulation may also affect creativity. In this review, we discuss the potential mechanisms by which treatment can influence the creative process and review the literature on the consequences of therapy on different aspects of creativity in people with epilepsy. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled "Epilepsy, Art, and Creativity".

Dopamine and the Creative Mind: Individual Differences in Creativity Are Predicted by Interactions between Dopamine Genes DAT and COMT.

The dopaminergic (DA) system may be involved in creativity, however results of past studies are mixed. We attempted to clarify this putative relation by considering the mediofrontal and the nigrostriatal DA pathways, uniquely and in combination, and their contribution to two different measures of creativity–an abbreviated version of the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking, assessing divergent thinking, and a real-world creative achievement index. We found that creativity can be predicted from interactions between genetic polymorphisms related to frontal (COMT) and striatal (DAT) DA pathways. Importantly, the Torrance test and the real-world creative achievement index related to different genetic patterns, suggesting that these two measures tap into different aspects of creativity, and depend on distinct, but interacting, DA sub-systems. Specifically, we report that successful performance on the Torrance test is linked with dopaminergic polymorphisms associated with good cognitive flexibility and medium top-down control, or with weak cognitive flexibility and strong top-down control. The latter is particularly true for the originality factor of divergent thinking. High real-world creative achievement, on the other hand, as assessed by the Creative Achievement Questionnaire, is linked with dopaminergic polymorphisms associated with weak cognitive flexibility and weak top-down control. Taken altogether, our findings support the idea that human creativity relies on dopamine, and on the interaction between frontal and striatal dopaminergic pathways in particular. This interaction may help clarify some apparent inconsistencies in the prior literature, especially if the genes and/or creativity measures were analyzed separately.

Different Brain Wave Patterns and Cortical Control Abilities in Relation to Different Creative Potentials

Contemporary understanding of brain functions provides a way to probe into the mystery of creativity. However, the prior evidence regarding the relationship between creativity and brain wave patterns reveals inconsistent conclusions. One possible reason might be that the means of selecting creative individuals in the past has varied in each study. By distinguishing creative potential as open-ended versus closed-ended based on theoretical views, this study examined different brain wave patterns and cortical control abilities in relation to different creative potentials by using electroencephalogram (EEG) biofeedback equipment. The results demonstrated that participants’ performance on the open-ended creative problem was positively related to EEG alpha frequencies, whereas performance on the closed-ended creative problem was related to larger variability in EEG dynamics between alpha and beta waves when performing either open-ended or closed-ended creativity tasks. Further, better control in changing states of brain wave activities according to the EEG biofeedback signals could predict closed-ended creativity performance. Open-ended creativity was related only to the enhancement of alpha signals. These results help clarify previous inconsistent findings, reveal different natures of distinct creativities, and further suggest ways to improve different aspects of creativity with modified biofeedback procedures.

The evolution of motor creativity during primary education

A number of researchers have verified the possibility of enhancing motor creativity through specific physical education programmes. Nevertheless,little is known about the developmental pattern or the most critical stages in the acquisition of motor creativity. The broad objective of this study was to determine whether significant changes in motor creativity occur during primary education, and if so, when. A total of 84 Spanish girls and boys were evaluated using tests taken or adapted from the Thinking Creatively in Action and Movement tasks and Bertsch' Tests of Motor Creativity. In general, the results show that motor creativity – especially fluency and flexibility - increase with progression through school, though different aspects of creativity show different trends. In particular, motor fluency increased especially rapidly between ages 6 and 9 years, and the symbolic transformation of objects and movements between ages 8 and 11 years.

Enhancing positive affect and divergent thinking abilities: Play some music and dance

This study compares the effect of dance on affect and cognition to music or exercise, in a young, non-clinical population. Participants were asked to complete tests of mood and creativity before and after spending 5 min either listening to music, dancing, cycling or sitting quietly. Both dancing and passively listening to music enhanced positive affect, decreased negative affect and reduced feelings of fatigue. Cycling and sitting quietly had no effect on positive mood or feelings of fatigue. Moreover, dancing and passively listening to music had dissociable effects on different aspects of creativity, with greater change in positive affect being associated with greater enhancement in measures of verbal and non-verbal creativity, respectively. We suggest that these findings support the use of either short duration dancing or passively listening to music as potentially powerful tools in enhancing emotional well-being and different aspects of divergent thinking in non-clinical settings.

Creativity and Narrative Task Performance: An Exploratory Study

Methods of communicative and task‐based language teaching often employ tasks that require students to use their imagination and to generate new ideas. These tasks might provide creative learners with more chance to practice and to produce more comprehensible output, which could lead to greater success in second language acquisition (SLA) (Swain, 1985). Therefore, creativity, which involves imagination, unconventionality, risk‐taking, flexibility, and creating new classifications and systematizations of knowledge (Sternberg, 1985a), might be a potential factor that affects language learning outcomes. Despite its potential relevance, creativity has been a neglected individual difference variable in the field of SLA. Our study is the first attempt to examine the role of creativity in second‐language oral task performance. Participants in the study were Hungarian secondary school learners of English whose creativity was measured with a standardized creativity test and who performed two versions of a narrative task. We examined the relationships among three aspects of creativity—originality, flexibility, and creative fluency—and different measures of task performance, which included the number of words and narrative clauses, subordination ratio, lexical variety, and accuracy. The findings suggest that creativity is best hypothesized as a multifaceted trait, as students scoring high on various components of creativity seemed to complete the same task in different ways. Students who invented a high number of solutions on a creativity test were found to engage in more talk; thus, in a foreign language setting, they might create more opportunities for themselves to use the language. The learners characterized by a higher level of originality tended to speak less and created more complex stories in terms of the narrative structure, but at the same time, they might deprive themselves of the beneficial effects of more output. No significant relationship among creativity and accuracy, complexity, and lexical variety was found. The magnitude of the correlations, however, indicates that creativity affects participants’ output in narrative tasks only moderately. The results of the study reveal that in addition to investigating the effects of individual variables on global measures of foreign language performance, it is also possible to study their influence on specific tasks. Based on our study, we conclude that different aspects of creativity might have an effect on the amount of output students produce but not on the quality of narrative performance. Nevertheless, further research involving more participants and using different types of tasks would be necessary to be able to generalize these findings to other contexts.

Creativity in the Age of Emerging Technology: Some Issues and Perspectives in 2010

Five years ago, most research in computer science seemed to concentrate on specifying the ways a computer could support creativity in various areas of human activities such as brainstorming, creative problem solving (CPS), arts and design, to name just a few. Two contrasted approaches (generic vs. specific) were clearly represented in the literature. Some work considered technology at a rather global and generic level, attempting to propose and to establish general relationships between computer technology and how it could/should support creativity (see Shneiderman et al., 2006). These papers were usually very enthusiastic, providing a list of potential values and positive effects of information technology on developing creativity in organizations (Dewett, 2003). Alternatively, a second approach has been to advance from empirical evidence and theories related to a specific targeted activity to derive fine-grained requirements for skill-based tools (e.g., Burleson, 2005; Yamamoto & Nakakoji, 2005) and, in some work, to extract design principles to apply for designing tools that aim to foster creativity (e.g., Hewett, 2005). In this introductory, we examine the two featured papers in this issue which illustrate three evolutions of research in the field of computer support for creativity. First, collecting empirical evidence is needed to embrace different aspects of creativity with multiple methods that bridge the disciplines of computer science, human–computer interaction (HCI), ergonomics and psychology. Second, evaluation approaches are conceptualizing computers as tools and/or computers as (digital) spaces. Third, collaborative and social aspects should be also considered when studying creativity in order to get a more ecological picture of variables that practically affect creative processes as well as creative outcomes.

Creativity Skills Applied to Earth Science Education: Examples from K-12 Teachers in a Graduate Creativity Class

In 1950, J. P. Guilford, the President of the American Psychological Association, gave a speech often identified as initiating national interest in creativity in which he asked researchers to find the promise of creativity in our children and to investigate enhancement of the development of the creative personality. Fifty years later, Yager (2000) called for the knowledge accumulated during the ensuing years of inquiry to be applied to science education.This article briefly explores different aspects of creativity, and then examines K-12 teachers' reactions to exercises applied to earth science concepts in a graduate creativity class. Different types of puzzle activities centering on geoscience content include a quiz game based on Odyssey of the Mind spontaneous problems, and other exercises related to embedded words, transformed clichés, remotely associated word sets, and wordsmithing. Teachers used visualization for an imaginary interview with a geoscientist, along with personal analogy of an earth science feature. As a culminating activity, teachers fashioned a geoscience curriculum material with a given set of items after using Productive Thinking (Schlichter and Palmer, 1993) to generate possible uses for each given material. Ideas for applying the activities to geoscience classes at various grade levels are included.

Creativity and Academic Achievement: An Investigation of Gender Differences

The purpose of this study was to investigate the possible relation between creativity and academic achievement, in particular, to see if this relation might be different for boys and girls. The 2 research questions were (a) What is the relation between different aspects of creativity and different subject areas of academic achievement?, and (6) Are there any differences for boys and girls in terms of the relation between different aspects of creativity and different subject areas of academic achievement? The students were from 68 schools randomly selected from the Basque County, Spain. Among these 2,264 students, 38% were boys and 62% were girls. Three creativity batteries, the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT; Torrance & Ball, 1984), the Abedi-Schumacher Creativity Test (CT; O'Neil, Abedi, & Spielberger, 1994), and the Villa and Auzmendi Creativity Test (VAT Auzmendi, Villa, & Abedi, 1996), were administered to the students. Teachers were also asked to rate students' creativity. Academic achievement was operationalized by students 'self-report of their achievement in 6subject areas: Spanish, Basque, English, natural science, social science, and mathematics. By canonical correlation analysis, the following results were found: If operationalized by the teachers' ratings, creativity was related to academic achievement for both boys and girls. For boys, Flexibility was the predominant factor that related to all 6 academic subject areas. For girls, Elaboration related to 4 of the academic subject areas (Spanish, Basque, English, and social science), and Fluency related to natural science and mathematics. If operationalized by the other 3 measures (TTCT, CT and VAT), however, creativity was barely related to academic achievement. Implications of the results for research in creativity and education are discussed.

O estímulo à criatividade no contexto universitário

O estudo examinou a extensão em que diferentes aspectos relativos à criatividade têm sido estimulados no contexto universitário, bem como a percepção, por parte de universitários, do nível de sua criatividade, do de seus colegas e professores. Quatrocentos e vinte e oito estudantes de universidades pública e particular participaram do estudo, respondendo a um inventário de incentivo à criatividade no contexto universitário, além de avaliar o nível de sua criatividade e o de seus professores e colegas. Os resultados apontam o pouco incentivo a distintos aspectos da criatividade por parte de professores universitários. Observou-se também que os universitários julgaram-se e a seus colegas como significativamente mais criativos do que os seus professores. Os resultados apontam a necessidade de maior atenção à expressão da cri atividade no contexto universitário.