The "standard" definition of creativity as novel and useful describes creative products, but creativity is constituted by processes. This misalignment contributes to the oft-noted challenges of operationalizing creativity. Here, we distinguish creativity as a process from creativity as an attribute (i.e. "creative-ness").…

The traditionally studied positive outcomes of creativity tend to be product-focused, such as Big-C contributions, good grades, or strong work performance. This paper makes an argument for the importance of less-discussed products of the process--the benefits that arise from being creative, regardless of one's abilities or level of achievement.…

This study examined the direct and indirect associations among imaginational over-excitability, cognitive play processes, affective play processes, and parent-reported creative potential of Hong Kong Chinese kindergarten children. Participants were 106 parents of local kindergarten children (43.4% girls, mean age = 60.1 months). Parents reported…

Virtual reality (VR) can promote design performance, and may generate a high cognitive load and affect creative design thinking as well. In order to examine the effect of VR application on cognitive load and engineering design creativity, this study recruited 81 eighth-grade students as participants and employed a non-equivalent-groups…

In today's knowledge-based economies, creativity in higher education has become a central focus for policy-makers. However, developing student creativity is still a challenge for higher education institutions. This paper seeks to contribute to our understanding of the creative processes at play in educational environments by using an experimental…

To investigate the cognitive processes underlying creative inspiration, we tested the extent to which viewing or copying prior examples impacted creative output in art. In Experiment 1, undergraduates made drawings under three conditions: (a) copying an artist's drawing, then producing an original drawing; (b) producing an original drawing without…

Although creativity techniques are highly recommended in working environments, their effects have been scarcely investigated. Two cognitive processes are often considered to foster creative potential and are, therefore, taken as a basis for creativity techniques: knowledge activation and conceptual combination. In this study, both processes were…

The development of group creativity can be challenging for both young students and their teachers. This study examined the processes and learning outcomes of group creativity training from the perspectives of elementary school students and teachers while identifying critical factors that contributed to the success of the training. Data were…