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…

Creativity is a multifaceted construct that recruits different cognitive processes. Here, we summarize studies that show that creativity develops considerably during adolescence with different developmental trajectories for insight, verbal divergent thinking, and visuospatial divergent thinking. Next, these developmental time courses are mapped to…

As calls for enhancing the ability of business students to think creatively and develop innovative goods and services have become universal, researchers in the area of creativity have expressed concerns that the U.S. educational system may not foster creative thinking. The authors' research is based on a sample of 442 undergraduate business…

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…

Students on an enterprise course running in a number of colleges in the UK in which invention and innovation formed part of the curriculum were asked to complete a questionnaire immediately upon having an inventive thought in an attempt to establish the thinking processes involved. Results from those who had ideas that subsequently proved to be…

We investigated whether 6- and 7-year-olds and 9- and 10-year-olds, as well as adults, process object dimensions independent of or in interaction with one another in a perception and action task by adapting Ganel and Goodale's method for testing adults ("Nature", 2003, Vol. 426, pp. 664-667). In addition, we aimed to confirm Ganel and Goodale's…

Applied two-step cognitive model to relationship between age and creative productivity. Selected ideation and elaboration rates as information-processing parameters that define mathematical function which describes age curves and specifies their variance across disciplines. Applied non-linear estimation program to further validate model. Despite…

This paper on the nature of expertise discusses implications of findings of an earlier study into the problem-solving, problem-finding and thought processes of 3 groups: 20 professional artists (experts), 20 semiprofessional artists (non-experts), and 20 non-artists (novices), each group consisting of 10 male and 10 female adults. Subjects were…

This study of 60 Swedish university students examined whether or not acute alcohol intoxication inhibits or facilitates the incubation phase of the creative process. Results found that the participants in the alcohol group produced significantly more incubations in their diaries and significantly higher levels of originality. (Author/CR)

Uses a case-study approach to examine the role of belief as a catalytic quality in the artistic making and the thinking processes used by children. Describes the processes encountered by children when presented with artistic tasks. Discusses the relationship between belief and the three other main dimensions of artistic thinking and making: social…