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…

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…

Cocreating meaning in collaboration is challenging. Success is often determined by people's abilities to coordinate their language to converge upon shared mental representations. Here we explore one set of low-level linguistic behaviors, linguistic alignment, that both emerges from, and facilitates, outcomes of high-level convergence. Linguistic…

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…

This study investigated the development of divergent thinking (DT) in early childhood. We followed 107 4-year-olds for 1.5 years. Children's DT was assessed with the Alternative Uses Task (AUT) every 6 months, four times in total. Within the AUT, children were asked to generate unusual uses of common objects while explaining how they came up with…

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…

This study investigated whether transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) targeting the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) can alter the thinking process and neural basis of creativity. Participants' performance on the compound remote associates (CRA) task was analyzed considering the semantic features of each trial after receiving different tDCS…

Creative problem-solving skills are essential for navigating complex, non-routine challenges, enabling individuals to create unique goals, execute innovative procedures and generate original outcomes. While the link between metacognitive skills and the creativity of outcomes was established only recently, further exploration is required to…

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…

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.…

Recent research suggests that working with generative artificial intelligence (AI), such as ChatGPT, can produce more creative outcomes than humans alone. However, does AI retain its creative edge when humans have access to alternative information sources, such as another human or the internet. We explored this question in a between-group…

Studies suggest that internally oriented cognitive processes are central to creativity. Here, we distinguish between intentional and unintentional forms of mind wandering and explore their behavioral and neural correlates. We used a sample of 155 healthy adults from the mind-brain-body dataset, all of whom completed resting-state fMRI scans and…

One of the well-known approaches to creativity differentiates between creative person, process, product, and press. In the study presented in this paper we focus on creative process and product associated with Problem Posing through Investigation (PPI) by experts in mathematical problem solving. We link the creative process to creativity of PPI…

Group diversity is an active topic in research as studies examine how differences in background, culture, job position, gender, and ethnicity can all impact group creativity. One relatively overlooked component is how diversity in academic knowledge affects group and individual creativity. In this study, 56 graduate students from a research…