How are ideas born? Contrary to commonly held beliefs, creative performance, like any goal-oriented action, requires understanding and managing one's own cognitive processes -- thus, efficient metacognition. Recently, a systematic framework of creative metacognition (CMC) has been proposed, assuming the relevance of metacognitive knowledge,…

When people are working on creative tasks, they make progress in conscious thought (CT) and unconscious thought (UT) processes. UT occurs outside conscious awareness, and unlike CT, it is independent of working memory resources. Previous studies suggest UT is more influential under certain conditions, known as the UT effect. Typically, these…

Creativity tests, like creativity itself, vary widely in their structure and use. These differences include instructions, test duration, environments, prompt and response modalities, and the structure of test items. A key factor is task structure, referring to the specificity of the number of responses requested for a given prompt. Classic…

Creativity is a fundamental human accomplishment from scientific advances to composing music. The left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) are important metacontrol hubs in flexibility and persistence brain states, respectively. Those hubs are related to divergent thinking, insight problem-solving, and…

This article presents the PTSI (Person x Task x Situation Interaction) theory of creativity. The theory deals with the creative person, the deployment of creativity in tasks, the ecological context in which this deployment takes place, and the types of creative products that result. The theory draws upon a wide range of previous work. The article…

Previous research has examined cross-cultural influences on creative performance. Findings of this line of inquiry are, however, not consistent. While some scholars suggest that individuals from Western cultures, who tend to apply context-independent thinking styles, produce more novel ideas given a cognitive task than individuals from Eastern…

A wandering mind is not always a creative mind. Anecdotes about ideas spontaneously entering awareness during walks, showers, and other off-task activities are plenty. The science behind it, however, is still inconclusive. Creativity might result from how thought context--whether thoughts are on-task or off-task--relates to thought dynamics--how…

Teachers often repeat language learning tasks and materials with students year after year. Although some tasks do not render satisfactory outcomes, students' performances can serve as valuable historical autoethnographic data that teachers can reflect on to improve their teaching materials and language learning tasks. In this article, using…

In this three-study investigation, we applied various approaches to score drawings created in response to both Form A and Form B of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking-Figural (broadly TTCT-F) as well as the Multi-Trial Creative Ideation task (MTCI). We focused on TTCT-F in Study 1, and utilizing a random forest classifier, we achieved 79% and…

While people approach creative actions in diverse ways, navigating them effectively requires self-regulatory effort. In this preregistered experiment, we examined whether simple self-regulation prompts, provided across the stages of the creative process, make the outcomes more creative. Participants (N = 332) engaged in one of three creativity…

Despite the lasting interest towards the relationship between intelligence and creativity, comparably less attention is paid to its age-related changes. Our paper considers the organization of fluid intelligence and psychometric indicators of creativity and is based on the experimental data obtained for children aged 11 (n = 99) and for young…

Anxiety-driven counterfactual thinking can be a slippery slope. Building on the premise that both positive and negative emotions can impact creativity, the present study examines how trait anxiety, optimism, and other mental health factors like therapy experience shape outputs in divergent thinking (DT) tasks. Using an online sample (N = 647), the…

Evaluative skill, the ability to accurately assess ideas in terms of originality or creativity, is a critical component of creativity. It involves discarding bad ideas and discerning ideas that are worthwhile to pursue. In light of the growing research on the association between individuals' evaluative skill and divergent thinking (DT), a research…

Previous studies found that bodily states have an impact on divergent thinking, but it remains to be seen how generalizable this effect could be, how exactly it depends on cognitive control, and whether similar effects can be found on convergent thinking. To address these questions, we examined the bodily state effect on divergent thinking,…

The aim of this study was to examine the impact of the Predict-Explain-Observe-Discuss-Explain (PEODE)-based laboratory on enhancing the verbal and figural creativity of gifted students. The quasi-experimental research design utilised a pre- and post-test approach with a non-equivalent control group, consisting of 60 sixth-grade gifted students.…