The lack of a universal definition of creativity has led to the assessment of creativity according to the definition favored by the evaluator. These assessments fall into four groups. The first centers around the concept of the creative product; it assesses a tangible event or relationship that results from the creative process, which is implied…

Argues that psychology has underinvestigated the study of creativity, provides six reasons for this neglect, and describes recent work on creativity that is leading to wider interest in the topic. Confluence theories, representing various multidisciplinary approaches to creativity, are proposed as offering a more promising approach to the study of…

Exploratory studies of the role of hemisphericity in creative functioning were made of graduate students. Results from instruments assessing hemisphericity, creative style or personality, and creative ability or level indicate that measures of creative style are positively related to the right hemisphere style of information processing. (CJ)

Author examines results of creativity and aptitude tests for subjects from early childhood through graduate student level, and concludes that creative production is directly related to information supply (or "knowledge-at-hand"), and that it is the structuring of this information that implies potential for creativity. (RW)

The work of E. P. Torrance concerning creative thinking abilities, creative learning and teaching, the creative learning environment, and the measurement of creative thinking is discussed. Torrance began his pioneering research on the nature of creative thinking in 1958 with pilot testing of his first batteries designed to assess creative thinking…

Research on divergent thinking (mental activity directed to open-end problems for which there is no one correct answer) indicates that the characteristics associated with divergency (fluency of thinking, flexibility of thinking, originality, redefinition, and elaborating) are right brain functions. To assess right brain function and verbal…

The author is concerned with the role of preconception in the process of creative thinking, and as a psychologist, he experimented to determine what variables influence creative thinking. In the process of experimentation, however, he began to feel that some specific preconceptions were warping his investigation and were detrimental to a useful…

The research attempted to determine if there are creative processes which are independent of intelligence, as generally measured, and to describe these processes. An original test battery was designed and administered to 102 college music majors. The subjects were separated into the categories of a 2 x 2 x 2 factorial design by high or low…

This study compared the creative self-direction, creative behavior, and creative activities of preschool children to determine if students and teachers trained in the creative process and in observation techniques can, with reliability, observe the creative potential of young children. Creative abilities of 155 children from four preschool centers…

Synergistic psychology has been proposed as a meta theory for synthesizing different psychological theories into an explanation of how social, cognitive, and biological factors interact in human behavior. The basic theoretical assumption in synergistic psychology is that internalized social interactions become higher mental functions that regulate…

The main emphasis of this investigation was to study the relationship of three cognitive styles (response tempo, response style and response ambiguity) of problem solving. A sample of 288 junior high school students participated in the study to ascertain the degree to which each cognitive style contributes to creative problem solving. The…