Conscious Augmentation of Creative State Enhances “Real” Creativity in Open-Ended Analogical Reasoning

Humans have an impressive ability to augment their creative state (i.e., to consciously try and succeed at thinking more creatively). Though this “thinking cap” phenomenon is commonly experienced, the range of its potential has not been fully explored by creativity research, which has often focused instead on creativity as a trait. A key question concerns the extent to which conscious augmentation of state creativity can improve creative reasoning. Although artistic creativity is also of great interest, it is creative reasoning that frequently leads to innovative advances in science and industry. Here, we studied state creativity in analogical reasoning, a form of relational reasoning that spans the conceptual divide between intelligence and creativity and is a core mechanism for creative innovation. Participants performed a novel Analogy Finding Task paradigm in which they sought valid analogical connections in a matrix of word-pairs. An explicit creativity cue elicited formation of substantially more creative analogical connections (measured via latent semantic analysis). Critically, the increase in creative analogy formation was not due to a generally more liberal criterion for analogy formation (that is, it appeared to reflect “real” creativity rather than divergence at the expense of appropriateness). The use of an online sample provided evidence that state creativity augmentation can be successfully elicited by remote cuing in an online environment. Analysis of an intelligence measure provided preliminary indication that the influential “threshold hypothesis,” which has been proposed to characterize the relationship between intelligence and trait creativity, may be extensible to the new domain of state creativity.     

Degas the Master without Emotion

This article provides a brief review of generally accepted ideas about creativity, followed by examples of music teachers teaching creatively and teaching their students to be more creative. Implications for teacher education and policy recommendations for music education are discussed     

Education Influences Creativity in Dyslexic and Non-Dyslexic Children and Teenagers

Background and Study Hypothesis

Are dyslexic children and teenagers more creative than non-dyslexic children and teenagers? Whether creativity is higher in dyslexia, and whether this could be related to neurological development specific to the dyslexic disorder, or to compensatory strategies acquired later in life, remains unclear. Here, we suggest an additional role of differential educational approaches taken in each school that could either enhance or suppress an already higher baseline creativity of dyslexic children and teenagers.

Results

Creativity in dyslexic and non-dyslexic children and teenagers from different schools in France and in Belgium, as well as in students from different universities, was evaluated with the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT). Children and teenagers with dyslexia and/or with other similar dysfunctions showed higher creativity scores than non-dyslexic participants. Moreover, the educational approach could further enhance the creative scores in dyslexia, which could be as high as those measured in students from art universities.

Conclusions

We conclude that dyslexic children and teenagers can be highly creative. Yet, expression of creativity can be modulated by educational approach, indicating a probable advantage for personal follow-up compared to normalizing education strategies.     

Testing Someone Else’s Intelligence: From Regimentation to Freedom1

This article discusses the trend in the development of testing from maximum regimentation of the test-takers’ activity (where they solve problems clearly formulated by the creator with a single correct answer) to diagnostic problematic situations that are very new and indefinite with an open beginning and an open end. With increasing frequency, the open beginning used in testing presupposes a freedom of independent formulation of one’s own research questions of the reality being studied and a search for answers while interacting with that reality. The emergence of mass testing of exploratory behavior is a reflection of the conviction that one of the key abilities that will be required in the very near future is the ability to cope with uncertainty and novelty, including by actively investigating them.

The discussion deals with the problems of testing intelligence and creativity in conditions of novelty and uncertainty, including the “judging problem.” It is pointed out that any thinking test, especially a test of creative thinking, is also an implicit (albeit perhaps not conscious) claim by its developers that their wisdom is virtually unsurpassed. After all, it is assumed that any person’s intelligence and creativity that unfold in a new situation may be described in the context of the model produced by the creative intellect of the test’s developer and, hence, by a more powerful “superintellect.” The errors that are practically inevitable with such an approach can be corrected in a dialog among various groups of researchers or, to the contrary, may be deepened if criticism is shut off.

The article analyzes a fundamental methodological error of creativity testing—the “standard list of creative answers” drawn up by the test-maker in advance, against which the participants’ solutions are checked. This error is explored in the case of an invention-oriented task in the international scholastic test PISA 2012, based on which the education ratings of countries are constructed.

An optimistic thesis is offered: no matter how successful testing is, humankind will never be fully prepared to determine its creative potential, due to its forward development. Without diagnostic tools, however, it will be far less prepared; they are a new and important part of that potential.     

STONE TOOLS AND THE UNIQUENESS OF HUMAN CULTURE

There is growing evidence that some species other than the human have behaviour that should be called cultural. Questions arise, then, of how human (and, perhaps, ape) cultures are different from those of other animals and how they have become so different. Human cultures are creative, generating new patterns of behaviour from those learned from others. Stone tool making provided a niche for the recruitment of tools and tool-making processes from one function to another. This is something not yet recorded for apes. This article explores the possible role of stone tools in the emergence of this creativity.     

From heritability to probability

Can a heritability value tell us something about the weight of genetic versus environmental causes that have acted in the development of a particular individual? Two possible questions arise. Q1: what portion of the phenotype of X is due to its genes and what portion to its environment? Q2: what portion of X’s phenotypic deviation from the mean is a result of its genetic deviation and what portion a result of its environmental deviation? An answer to Q1 provides the full information about X’s development, while an answer to Q2 leaves out a large portion unexplained—that portion which corresponds to the phenotypic mean. Q1 is unanswerable, but I show it is nevertheless legitimate under certain quantitative genetics models. With regard to Q2, opinions in the philosophical and biological literature differ as to its legitimacy. I argue that not only is it legitimate, but in particular, under a few simplifying assumptions, it allows for a quantitative probabilistic answer: for normally distributed quantitative traits with no G-E correlation or statistical G × E interaction, we can assess the probability that X’s genes had a greater effect than its environment on its deviation from the mean population value. This probability is expressed as a function the heritability and the individual’s phenotypic value; we can also provide a quantitative probabilistic answer to Q2 for an arbitrary individual where the probability is a function only of heritability.     

Methodological interculturalism: breaking down epistemological barriers around diversity management

As part of the post-multicultural era, transnationalism, super-diversity, cosmopolitanism and solidarity develop a sense of awareness to live in a complex society. This requests us to identify the epistemological barriers preventing us to produce new knowledge, since there is a raising consciousness that these new frameworks cannot be addressed with old policy maps. All share the need to go beyond methodological nationalism, and one of its by-products: multiculturalism. Methodological interculturalism is a promising epistemological lens through which to cluster this new diversity geography. It is a direct answer to the key question, what happens when the unit of analysis from which we argue about “how to live together” is diversity itself rather than a supposed us/we/unity/ majority/state/nation lens. The outcome is the recognition that super-diversity and transnationalism is a fact that we need to incorporate into our public culture, together with new normative claims of justice related to cosmopolitanism and solidarity.     

Advances in insectivore and rodent systematics due to geometric morphometrics

• 1 Morphometrics, the study of the variation and change in form amongst organisms, serves as a basic methodological tool in various fields of biological research, including systematics. Because it includes information about spatial relationships amongst anatomical landmarks, geometric morphometrics is more suitable for analyzing morphometric variation than methods based on distance measurements.
• 2 Geometric morphometrics allows us to answer general ecological and evolutionary questions about shape.
• 3 In this paper, landmark‐based methods are described and illustrated, based on a dataset of measurements from 295 Apodemus mandibles, and the applications of such methods in the systematics of insectivores (Eulipotyphla) and rodents (Rodentia) are summarized.

     

Psychoses and creativity: is the missing link a biological mechanism related to phospholipids turnover?

Recent evidence suggests that genetic and biochemical factors associated with psychoses may also provide an increased propensity to think creatively. The evolutionary theories linking brain growth and diet to the appearance of creative endeavors have been made recently, but they lack a direct link to research on the biological correlates of divergent and creative thought. Expanding upon Horrobin's theory that changes in brain size and in neural microconnectivity came about as a result of changes in dietary fat and phospholipid incorporation of highly unsaturated fatty acids, we propose a theory relating phospholipase A2 (PLA2) activity to the neuromodulatory effects of the noradrenergic system. This theory offers probable links between attention, divergent thinking, and arousal through a mechanism that emphasizes optimal individual functioning of the PLA2 and NE systems as they interact with structural and biochemical states of the brain. We hope that this theory will stimulate new research in the neural basis of creativity and its connection to psychoses.     

Merging movements: Diverse dance practices in postsecondary education

This article examines students' choices in a postsecondary dance major curriculum where students selected to study one or more of five dance practices (African and Diaspora Movement Practices, Contemporary Ballet, Movement Language Sources, Postmodern Contemporary Dance, and Urban Movement Practices) each semester along with required coursework centered on inquiry, the ability to pose and pursue informed questions, and creativity, the process of making something new. Using a qualitative research approach, the study investigated three main questions: What factors drive students' course selections?; How do students fuse information from diverse dance practices?; and What do students learn through taking courses with peers who study diverse dance practices? The study's findings suggest that the selection and study of diverse dance practices in combination with a curricular emphasis on creativity and inquiry led students to feel empowered in their dance education, develop and articulate individualized movement approaches, and increased awareness of dance and creative problem-solving ability. Postsecondary dance programs prepare future citizens, artists, educators, and administrators who may find themselves in leadership or other positions that require a re-thinking and implementation of arts policies in public schools and other settings. As such, the study's findings also speak to the potential for arts policies and their implementation to evolve in a way that situates dance as a critical component of a comprehensive education.     

Comparing the effects of art education and science education on creative thinking in high school students

What is the link between art and creativity? The purpose of this study was to determine the role of art education in creative thinking. A causal-comparative research design was used. Arts and science high school students (N = 162) participated. Results showed that creative thinking in visual arts students in Grade 10 with high scores differed significantly from that in music and science students; however, this difference was not found among students in Grade 11. A main reason for this result in Grade 10 students might be the non-routine problem-solving process in visual arts education, in which artwork production is an important component in creative thinking development. Considering this result, it was concluded that the effect of different education disciplines—called education department effect—on creative thinking can be significant.     

Strategy and results: Sex differences in electrographic correlates of verbal and figural creativity

Sex differences in electroencephalographic (EEG) correlates of creativity were studied using verbal and figural divergent tasks to be performed in accordance with the instructions to “give any solution” or “give an original solution.” The common effect was a greater activity of the right hemisphere, which did not depend on the sex, task type, or instructions for performance of the tasks. The α₂ and β₂ rhythms were the main EEG frequency correlates of creative thinking; the degree and sign of their reactivity depended on the aforementioned factors. Although the creative abilities in men and women were similar under test conditions, the EEG correlates of both figural and verbal tasks were sex-dependent. A high reactivity of the α₂ rhythm was more marked during verbal creative thinking in women; and that of the β₂ rhythm, during figural creative thinking in men. The instruction-related improvement of the critical selection of solutions was to a greater extent reflected by changes in the cortical activity, more pronounced in the frontal cortex in the women. Thus, the same creative productivity in men and women was mediated by different strategies of performance of both figural and verbal tasks, and the sex-related differences in these strategies remained even when the motivation for creativity was changed.     

The wedding of two trees: connections,equivalences, and subjunctivity in a Tamil ritual

A wedding between two trees in a Tamil village reveals that a tree can be more than, while still remaining, a tree. It needs to be a tree because trees do certain things. It can be made more than a tree, however, through a logic of homological connections which temporarily create equivalences between trees and divinities. The wedding (kalyanam), a ubiquitous Tamil ritual form which pertains not only to marriage, creatively and subjunctively opens up new possibilities to change ‘it could be’ and ‘it should be’ to ‘let it be so’. The wedding of two trees seeks to materialize ideal situations and outcomes by mobilizing the aliveness of trees, a quality they share with humans and animals, without positing personhood, identity, or confusing categories. In making this argument, I question choices of comparators in anthropological analyses which posit a holistic ‘non-West’ against a dualistic ‘West’ and contrast a taken-for-granted ‘us’ with ‘our’ really rather different ‘others’.     

Women’s fertility across the cycle increases the short-term attractiveness of creative intelligence

Male provisioning ability may have evolved as a “good dad” indicator through sexual selection, whereas male creativity may have evolved partly as a “good genes” indicator. If so, women near peak fertility (midcycle) should prefer creativity over wealth, especially in short-term mating. Forty-one normally cycling women read vignettes describing creative but poor men vs. uncreative but rich men. Women’s estimated fertility predicted their short-term (but not long-term) preference for creativity over wealth, in both their desirability ratings of individual men (r=.40, p<.01) and their forced-choice decisions between men (r=.46, p<.01). These preliminary results are consistent with the view that creativity evolved at least partly as a good genes indicator through mate choice.     

Sex steroids and their actions on the birdsong system

It is probably not surprising to most of us that the endocrine system plays a significant role in controlling the singing behavior of birds. We are familiar with the song of birds as a conspicuous acoustic feature of our environment during the avian breeding season. We often witness song when it is produced by birds (males) that are aggressively establishing and defending territories and that are advertising to available females. Thus, it is easy to imagine that song is likely to be stimulated by gonadal hormones. However, the ways in which gonadal sex steroids influence the various parts of the brain at various stages of the bird's life to influence song are complex and far from being completely understood. In this review, I will highlight some of the significant discoveries that have contributed to our view that the songbird brain is a significant and dynamic target of sex steroids. I will also describe what we have learned about properties of the endocrine system and the brain and how they each contribute to making androgens or estrogens available to particular parts of the songbird brain. Finally, I will describe some new research directions that may help answer some unresolved issues about hormonal effects on the songbird brain. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Neurobiol 33: 619–631, 1997     

The evolutionary roots of creativity: mechanisms and motivations

We consider the evolution of cognition and the emergence of creative behaviour, in relation to vocal communication. We address two key questions: (i) what cognitive and/or social mechanisms have evolved that afford aspects of creativity?; (ii) has natural and/or sexual selection favoured human behaviours considered ‘creative’? This entails analysis of ‘creativity’, an imprecise construct: comparable properties in non-humans differ in magnitude and teleology from generally agreed human creativity. We then address two apparent problems: (i) the difference between merely novel productions and ‘creative’ ones; (ii) the emergence of creative behaviour in spite of high cost: does it fit the idea that females choose a male who succeeds in spite of a handicap (costly ornament); or that creative males capable of producing a large and complex song repertoire grew up under favourable conditions; or a demonstration of generally beneficial heightened reasoning capacity; or an opportunity to continually reinforce social bonding through changing communication tropes; or something else? We illustrate and support our argument by reference to whale and bird song; these independently evolved biological signal mechanisms objectively share surface properties with human behaviours generally called ‘creative’. Studying them may elucidate mechanisms underlying human creativity; we outline a research programme to do so.     

Developmental plasticity and acclimation both contribute to adaptive responses to alternating seasons of plenty and of stress in <Emphasis Type="Italic">Bicyclus</Emphasis> butterflies

Plasticity is a crucial component of the life cycle of invertebrates that live as active adults throughout wet and dry seasons in the tropics. Such plasticity is seen in the numerous species of Bicyclus butterflies in Africa which exhibit seasonal polyphenism with sequential generations of adults with one or other of two alternative phenotypes. These differ not only in wing pattern but in many other traits. This divergence across a broad complex of traits is associated with survival and reproduction either in a wet season that is favourable in terms of resources, or mainly in a dry season that is more stressful. This phenomenon has led us to examine the bases of the developmental plasticity in a model species, B. anynana, and also the evolution of key adult life history traits, including starvation resistance and longevity. We now understand something about the processes that generate variation in the phenotype, and also about the ecological context of responses to environmental stress. The responses clearly involve a mix of developmental plasticity as cued by different environments in pre-adult development, and the acclimation of life history traits in adults to their prevailing environment.     

Weight-Related Attitudes and Behaviors in Fourth Grade American Indian Children

STEVENS, JUNE, MARY STORY, ALBERTA BECENTI, SIMONE A. FRENCH, JOEL GITTELSOHN, SCOTT B. GOING, JUHAERI, SARAH LEVIN, AND DAVID M. MURRAY. Obes Res. 1999;7:34–42. Objective : American Indian children have a high prevalence of obesity, yet little is known about weight-related attitudes and the prevalence of dieting in this population. This study assessed weight concerns, body size perceptions, weight reduction attempts, and weight loss methods in fourth grade American Indian children. Research Methods and Procedures : Participants (n = 304) attended one of eight schools in the Pathways Feasibility Study. Question and answer choices were read to children by trained staff, and children marked their own answers. Results : Thirty-eight percent of the children reported that they had tried to lose weight. The most common strategy for weight reduction was exercising more. Girls were more likely than boys to be dissatisfied with their body size (48% of girls vs. 34% of boys desired a slimmer body size; 22% of girls vs. 15% of boys desired a larger body size; p<0.71). Children who had tried to lose weight were more likely to indicate that the size they most desired and the most healthy size were smaller than their perceived size (p<0.71). Children who reported trying to lose weight were also more likely to want to be skinnier and to be unhappy about their weight than were children who did not report trying to lose weight (p<0.71 for both). Discussion : We conclude that weight loss attempts and weight-related concerns are prevalent in American Indian children at a young age.     

Rice domestication: histories and mysteries

Domesticated rice (Oryza sativa) is one of the world’s most important food crops, culturally, nutritionally and economically ( Khush 1997 ). Thus, it is no surprise that there is intense curiosity about its genetic and geographical origins, its response to selection under domestication, and the genetic structure of its wild relative, Oryza rufipogon. Studies of Oryza attempting to answer these questions have accompanied each stage of the development of molecular markers, starting with allozymes and continuing to genome sequencing. While many of these studies have been restricted to small sample sizes, in terms of either the number of markers used or the number and distribution of the accessions, costs are now low enough that researchers are including large numbers of molecular markers and accessions. How will these studies relate to previous findings and long‐held assumptions about rice domestication and evolution? If the paper in this issue of Molecular Ecology ( Huang et al. 2012 ) is any indication, there will be some considerable surprises in store. In this study, a geographically and genomically thorough sampling of O. rufipogon and O. sativa revealed two genetically distinct groups of wild rice and also indicated that only one of these groups appears to be related to domesticated rice. While this fits well with previous studies indicating that there are genetic subdivisions within O. rufipogon, it stands in contrast to previous findings that the two major varieties of O. sativa (indica and japonica) were domesticated from two (or more) subpopulations of wild rice.