Cognitive Mechanisms Underlying the Creative Process
Liane Gabora2002, Social Science Research Network
Sign up for access to the world's latest research
checkGet notified about relevant papers
checkSave papers to use in your research
checkJoin the discussion with peers
checkTrack your impact
Abstract
This paper proposes an explanation of the cognitive change that occurs as the creative process proceeds. During the initial, intuitive phase, each thought activates, and potentially retrieves information from, a large region containing many memory locations. Because of the distributed, content-addressable structure of memory, the diverse contents of these many locations merge to generate the next thought. Novel associations often result. As one focuses on an idea, the region searched and retrieved from narrows, such that the next thought is the product of fewer memory locations. This enables a shift from association-based to causation-based thinking, which facilitates the fine-tuning and manifestation of the creative work.
Related papers
The cognitive network model of creativity: A new causal model of creativity and a new brainstorming technique
2000
Abstract Creativity is a vital component of problem solving, yet despite decades of creativity research, many of the techniques for increasing creative production still lack compelling theoretical and causal foundations. This paper defines a Cognitive Network Model, a causal model of creative solution generation for problem solving domains.
A Modern Perspective on Creative Cognition
Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, 2009
Revenge of the “Neurds”: Characterizing Creative Thought in Terms of the Structure and Dynamics of Memory
Creativity Research Journal, 2010
There is cognitive, neurological, and computational support for the hypothesis that defocusing attention results in divergent or associative thought, conducive to insight and finding unusual connections, while focusing attention results in convergent or analytic thought, conducive to rule-based operations. Creativity appears to involve both. It is widely believed that it is possible to escape mental fixation by spontaneously and temporarily engaging in a more associative mode of thought. The resulting insight (if found) may be refined in a more analytic mode of thought. The questions addressed here are: (1) how does the architecture of memory support these two modes of thought, and what is happening at the neural level when one shifts between them? Recent advances in neuroscience shed light on this. Activated cell assemblies are composed of multiple neural cliques, groups of neurons that respond differentially to general or context-specific aspects of a situation. I refer to neural cliques that would not be included in the assembly if one were in an analytic mode, but would be if one were in an associative mode, as neurds. It is posited that the shift to a more associative mode of thought is accomplished by recruiting neurds that respond to abstract or atypical microfeatures of the problem or task. Since memory is distributed and content-addressable, this fosters the forging of associations to potentially relevant items previously encoded in those neurons. Thus it is proposed that creative thought not by searching a space of predefined alternatives and blindly tweaking those that hold promise, but by evoking remotely associated items through the recruitment of neurds in a distributed, content-addressable memory.
The Role of Associative and Executive Processes in Creative Cognition
Memory & Cognition
How does the mind produce creative ideas? Past research points to an important role of both executive and associative processes in creative cognition. But such work has largely focused on the influence of one ability or the other—executive or associative—so the extent to which both abilities jointly affect creative thought remains unclear. Using multivariate structural equation modeling, we conducted two studies to determine the relative influence of executive and associative processes in domain-general creative cognition (i.e., divergent thinking). Participants completed a series of verbal fluency tasks, and responses were analyzed by means of Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and scored for semantic distance as a measure of associative ability. Participants also completed several measures of executive function—broad retrieval ability (Gr) and fluid intelligence (Gf). Across both studies, we found substantial effects of both associative and executive abilities: as the average semantic...
Cognition about the creative process – Interview with Dr Andrew P. Allen
Europe’s Journal of Psychology, 2016
What is the relationship between the creative process and cognition and perception? Lynda Loughnane, a master’s student in Art and Process in Crawford College of Art and Design, Cork, Ireland interviewed Dr Andrew P. Allen about the subject. Areas covered include mindfulness, Type 1 and Type 2 thinking, stage theories of creativity, engagement with the art process and the artwork, phenomenology and consciousness with and without self report. The interview was constructed to cover a wide range of subject matter, so as to gather as much information as possible in…
Commentary: Creativity and Memory: Effects of an Episodic-Specificity Induction on Divergent Thinking
Frontiers in psychology, 2016
The Cambridge Handbook of the Neuroscience of Creativity
Cambridge University Press eBooks, 2018
This chapter takes as its departure point a neural level theory of insight that arose from studies of the sparse, distributed, content-addressable architecture of associative memory. It is argued that convergent thought is most fruitfully characterized in terms of, not the generation of a single correct solution (as it is conventionally construed), but using concepts in their most compact form by activating neural cell assemblies that respond to their most typical properties. This allows them to be deployed in a conventional manner such that effort is reserved for exploring causal relationships. Conversely, it is argued that divergent thought is most fruitfully characterized in terms of, not the generation of multiple solutions (as it is conventionally construed), but using concepts in a form that is, albeit expanded, constrained by the situation, by activating neural cell assemblies that respond to context-specific atypical properties. This allows them to be deployed in a manner that is conducive to exploring unconventional yet potentially relevant associations, and unearthing potentially useful relationships of correlation. Thus, divergent thought can involve as few as one idea. This proposal is compatible with widespread beliefs that (1) most creative tasks require not many solutions but one, yet entail both divergent and convergent thinking, and (2) not all problems with multiple solutions require creative thinking, and conversely, some problems with single solution do require creative thought. The chapter discusses how the ability to shift between convergent and divergent modes of thought may have evolved, and it concludes with educational and vocational implications.
The Cognitive, Emotional and Neural Correlates of Creativity
Frontiers research topics, 2015
Related topics
Cited by
Interaction in creative tasks
Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in computing systems - CHI '06, 2006
The design of tools for creative activities affects the creative processes and output of users. In this paper we consider how an understanding of creative interaction can inform the design of support tools in a creative domain, and where creative needs cross domain boundaries. Using observations of musical composers we analyse the theoretical approaches to understanding creativity and their use to HCI. Cycles of ideation and evaluation are suggested as atomic elements of creative interactions, with the representation of ideas a central activity for individual and collaborating composers. A model of collaborative composition was developed, along with an analysis of the representational types used in the domain. This led to the design and evaluation of a prototype Sonic Sketchpad for musical idea representation.
Related papers
Cognition and Creativity
CognitLve research on creativity is both traditional and innovative. It is traditwnal in the sense that many of the well-recognized processes, structures, and stores from mainstream cognitive psyclwlogy ha1•e been used to understand creatil•e thinking. It is innovative because there is a need to understand processes which are not recognized unless one is specifically interested in creativity. Some of these are inherently subjective, a fact which is often disregarded by those hoping for a traditionally scientific analysis. Still, much of the interest in the cognitive sciences concerns how new constructs come into being; and anyone interested in that is in fact thinking about creativity.
Editorial: “The cognitive, emotional and neural correlates of creativity”
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2015
The Role of Semantic Associations as a Metacognitive Cue in Creative Idea Generation
Journal of Intelligence, 2023
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Creative cognition: The diverse operations and the prospect of applying a cognitive neuroscience perspective
Methods, 2007
Creativity is deWned quite simply as "the ability to create" in most lexicons, but, in reality, this is a complex and heterogeneous construct about which there is much to be discovered. The cognitive approach to investigating creativity recognizes and seeks to understand this complexity by investigating the component processes involved in creative thinking. The cognitive neuroscience approach, which has only limitedly been applied in the study of creativity, should ideally build on these ideas in uncovering the neural substrates of these processes. Following an introduction into the early experimental ideas and the cognitive approach to creativity, we discuss the theoretical background and behavioral methods for testing various processes of creative cognition, including conceptual expansion, the constraining inXuence of examples, creative imagery and insight. The complex relations between the underlying component processes of originality and relevance across these tasks are presented thereafter. We then outline how some of these conceptual distinctions can be evaluated by neuroscientiWc evidence and elaborate on the neuropsychological approach in the study of creativity. Given the current state of aVairs, our recommendation is that despite methodological diYculties that are associated with investigating creativity, adopting the cognitive neuroscience perspective is a highly promising framework for validating and expanding on the critical issues that have been raised in this paper.
The Role of Knowledge in Creative Thinking
Creativity Research Journal, 2024
In this invited paper, I briefly review my past, current, and future lines of research. The associative theory of creativity argues that higher creative individuals have a richer semantic memory structure that facilitates broader associative search processes, that leads to the combination of remote concepts into novel and appropriate ideas. Based on this theory, in my research I investigate the role of knowledge-or semantic memory-in high-level cognition, focusing on creativity, associative thinking, and memory search, in typical and clinical populations. To do so, I apply computational tools from network science, natural language processing, and machine learning, coupled with empirical cognitive and neural research. Such computational tools are enabling the representation and operationalization of the structure of semantic memory and the processes that operate over it. This is critical as it allows us to start quantifying issues that for a very long time were studied very subjectively in creativity research-remoteness of ideas, associative thinking, flexible/ richer semantic memory structure, etc. Such work is offering unique, quantitative, ways to directly study classic theories of creativity, propelling forward our understanding of its complexity.
Explaining the Creative Mind
Creativity is explained in the different perspectives of psychology as a mental and social process. The different dimensions of creativity from available theories were based on influences, description of the task, ability, and characteristics of individuals who experience it. In the present article, creativity is explained in five major themes: (1) attributes of creativity, (2) forms and outlets, (3) factors that stimulate it, (4) situations where it is facilitated, and (5) situations that hinder it. There is a connection between how one conceptualizes creativity and the process involved in stimulating and facilitating it. The connection is explained in some common clusters that come out for each major theme. Creativity is generally explained to have multiple attributes. Creativity is stimulated and facilitated based on one's belief. The self and social factors can hinder creativity.
Creative Cognition: Conceptual Blending and Expansion in a Generative Exemplar Task
IAFOR Journal of Psychology & the Behavioral Sciences, 2019
Creativity is a multifaceted and complex human trait that allows one to generate and explore unlimited novel ideas and artifacts. One method to study creativity is to use a creative cognition approach (Finke, Ward, & Smith, 1992; Smith, Ward, Finke, 1995; Ward, Smith, & Finke, 1999), which examines the cognitive processes and structures that lead to the generation of creative ideas. Participants in this study were asked to draw and describe a creature on a distant planet, similar to a prompt used by Ward (1991). Results suggest that the participants relied on what has been termed, structured imagination (Ward, 1994, 1995), or a repertoire of existing knowledge that constrains the production of imaginative ideas. Five responses were then selected for deeper analysis to show how two cognitive processes, conceptual blending (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002) and conceptual expansion, are used to blend and expand known concepts in order to produce a novel idea. This paper discusses implications this research has for theories of creativity and its real world applications, as well as its importance for educational objectives.
An Empirical Study on the Mechanisms of Creativity in Visual Arts
Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Sapporo (Japan): 1727-1732, 2012
This collaborative research between a visual artist and a cognitive scientist is based on the assumption that the so- called aha moment actually emerges from a number of interacting micro-processes. The empirical study presented here focuses on the creative process involved in connecting two pictures by painting another picture in the middle. This technique was involved in four Infinite Landscape workshops conducted at Art Museums in Japan and Europe over the last five years. Based on the artist’s verbal recollection of the ideas that occurred to him as he drew each of the connecting pictures, we identify the micro-processes and cognitive mechanisms underlying these ideas, and discuss their implications for modeling creativity.
Information Processing Theory and its Explanation of the Creative Process
Creativity and Innovation Management, 1994
Herbert Simon, perhaps the most influential exponent of Information-Processing theory, has argued that creativity involves no more than normal problem-solving processes. This article describes Information-Processing theory and its explanation of the creative process. It also highlights major criticisms to such an explanation.
Creative thought: an investigation of conceptual structures and processes
Choice Reviews Online, 1997
Abstract 1. examine the historical case of one of the world's great analogical thinkers, Johannes Kepler/the authors relate his activities to the principles underlying a precise characterization of the analogical reasoning process, namely, the structure mapping engine/consider in depth the processes of highlighting, projection, re-representation, and restructuring as processes of conceptual change/show how anecdotal accounts and precise theorizing about the exact nature of cognitive processes can complement one another/ ...
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.