A scientific definition of the meaning of human creative thought is pursued. (JD)

Sixty graduate students sorted stories according to three dimensions for classifying analogies: (1) physical similarity; (2) similarity in goals; and (3) whether the analogy leads to a reformulation of the question. High interrater agreement supports the use of the three dimensions to understand earlier inconsistent results in analogical problem…

Creativity can be distinguished from intelligence, but there is no consensus on how the recognized stages of the creative act can be taught. The steps to rational thinking can and should be intentionally taught and rationality may prepare a base for unexpected creative insights. (DB)

Using Raven Progressive Matrices Test items, this study developed an empirical measure of subjects' ability to create new problems. The relationship between this ability and problem solving skills was examined. A very low correlation was found between inventing and solving problems. Problem creation was more difficult than problem solving. (BS)

Conventional instruction in critical thinking may ignore the creative and intuitive functions of rationality, thereby encouraging a mechanically rote approach to textual analysis, problem solving, and problem construction. Such an overemphasis upon logical "calculus of justification" functions has epistemological weaknesses and pedagogical…

The development of critical ability, or cognitive criticism, is being studied in a two-year Swedish project described in this progress report. Cognitive criticism is valuable in all occupational fields, but especially futurology and technology assessment. This project proposes to make concrete the aims of critical training, and to identify and…

Systematic observations of thousands of high school students in the California Mentally Gifted Minors/Gifted and Talented Education programs identified five principles underlying the development of high level thinking skills in this population: (1) Exceptional performance on any criterion requires mutually reinforcing antecedents, the effects of…

Intelligence can be best understood through the study of nonentrenched, i.e., novel, kinds of tasks. Such tasks require subjects to use concepts or form strategies that differ in kind from those to which they are accustomed. The only partial success of the cognitive-correlates and cognitive-components approaches to intelligence that are in…

Creativity is a natural skill, but one that can be lost in the pursuit of linear knowledge in the academic classroom. There are historical reasons why the development of natural creativity has been suppressed (the Enlightenment, for example, with its emphasis on scientific method and empirical proof). Right brain/left brain research and…

Describes the contents of a book entitled The Care and Feeding of Ideas: A Guide to Encouraging Creativity which considers the thinking process, why skills need to be developed, and how students use or should use these thinking skills. (RT)

A project to design and evaluate instructional techniques to be used with emotionally disturbed adolescents compared two groups of emotionally disturbed adolescents with normal high school students. Objectives were to evaluate experimental curriculum units and to obtain data to determine to what extent learning difficulties characterize…

We are delighted to welcome you to the International Psychological Applications Conference and Trends (InPACT) 2016, taking place in Lisbon, Portugal, from 30 of April to 2 of May, 2016. Psychology, nowadays, offers a large range of scientific fields where it can be applied. The goal of understanding individuals and groups (mental functions and…