Commentary: Divergent thinking tests have problems, but this is not the solution.

Commentary on an article by P. J. Silvia et al. (see record 2008-05954-001) which discusses the topic of divergent thinking. It is certainly true, as Silvia et al. (2008) write, that "after half a century of research, the evidence for global creative ability ought to be better" (p. 68). The authors believe--incorrectly, I think--that the reason that divergent thinking tests have not done a better job can be found in the various scoring systems that have been used when assessing divergent thinking ability. I have presented evidence elsewhere that creativity is not a general ability or set of traits or dispositions that can be applied across domains (Baer, 1991, 1993, 1994a, 1994b, 1998). In those studies, I used Amabile's (1982, 1996) Consensual Assessment Technique (which is the basis for the subjective scoring technique proposed by Silvia et al. [2008]) to judge the creativity of a wide range of artifacts. What I found was that there is little correlation among the creativity ratings received by subjects across domains, and what little there is tends to disappear if an IQ test is also given and variance attributable to intelligence is first removed. The evidence presented thus far for Silvia et al.'s (2008) proposed method for scoring responses to divergent thinking tasks has far too many flaws to allow any confidence in its use. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Discernment and creativity: How well can people identify their most creative ideas?

How well can people judge the creativity of their ideas? The distinction between generating ideas and evaluating ideas appears in many theories of creativity, but the massive literature on generation has overshadowed the question of evaluation. After critically reviewing the notion of accuracy in creativity judgments, this article explores whether (1) people in general are discerning and (2) whether some people are more discerning than others. University students (n = 226) completed four divergent thinking tasks and then decided which responses were their most creative. Judges then rated the creativity of all of the responses. Multilevel latent-variable models found that people's choices strongly agreed with judges' ratings of the responses; overall, people were discerning in their decisions. But some people were more discerning than others: people high in openness to experience, in particular, had stronger agreement between their decisions and the judges' ratings. Creative people are thus doubly skilled: they are better at generating good ideas and at picking their best ideas. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Longitudinal hit ratios of classical composers: Reconciling "Darwinian" and expertise acquisition perspectives on lifespan creativity.

What are the prospects for meaningful learning in high-level creativity? An expertise acquisition view of creativity is optimistic about longitudinal improvement; a "Darwinian" view, emphasizing chance, is not. To address this issue, the complete outputs of 65 eminent composers (15,657 works) were tabulated and weighted; each work's masterpiece status was operationalized by citation and recording count measures. Works were assigned to 5-year age intervals, synchronized across composers by age at 1st masterwork. Hit ratio (masterwork-level music divided by total output) was calculated for each interval for each composer. The overall hit ratio trajectory was a single-peaked function, with a maximum around age 50. Reliable age effects held even during composers' mature periods, inconsistent with the chance view and more consistent--although not entirely so--with the expertise acquisition view. Several variables predicted individual differences in hit ratio trajectories; most notably, composers who wrote their best works later in their careers showed stronger agewise increases in hit ratio during their mature periods, even when best works were removed from the trajectories. Implications and prospects for reconciling the expertise and chance views, via a typology of conceptualist versus experimentalist creators, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

机电一体化产品创新的概念设计研究

提出机电一体化产品创新的概念设计全过程模型、创新层次与人机协同的关系、人机协同概念设计的关键技术。创新过程中可以程式化的部分由计算机来实现，而难以程式化的部分则由设计者来完成。指出在构造人机协同概念设计CAD平台时，刚愎自用模块化思想划分软件功能模块和组织开发过程，以利于系统的升级开发和高校、研究院所、企业的协调合作。     

在多媒体网络环境中培养学生的创新能力

多媒体网络作为一项新技术、新工具进入教学领域,给传统的教学带来了新的途径和方法。结合多媒体参与、学生学习以PC为主、从中获取信息并与教师和同学共同探讨的网络教学模式,论述了如何在多媒体网络环境中培养学生的创新能力。     

The curvilinear relation between experienced creative time pressure and creativity: Moderating effects of openness to experience and support for creativity.

This study examined the possibility of a curvilinear relation between the creative time pressure employees experience at work and their creativity. The authors also examined whether this curvilinear relation was moderated by employees' scores on the openness to experience personality dimension and by the support for creativity employees received from supervisors and coworkers. Data were obtained from 170 employees and 10 supervisors of a manufacturing organization. Results showed an inverted U-shaped creative time pressure-creativity relation for employees who scored high on openness to experience while simultaneously receiving support for creativity. The authors discussed the implications of these results for future research and practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Creativity and aggression.

We studied problems of identification in an experiment using a meta-contrast design. The first stimulus in the pair (A) was the word I shown subliminally. The second stimulus (B) depicted an aggressor and a victim facing each other. To manipulate the subject's identification, the subliminal A was flashed either on the victim or on the aggressor, or was completely withheld. Subjects were 28 16-year-olds of both sexes. They also took a perceptgenetic (PG) test measuring creativity and a test on anxiety and defensive strategies as revealed in the perceptual process (the meta-contrast technique or MCT). It was predicted that creative subjects would identify more openly with the aggressor than noncreative ones, when I was presented on the aggressor. Differences in the use of defenses were also expected. The results supported the predictions. It was concluded that creative subjects are more self-reliant than noncreative ones, more inclined to believe in the value of private impressions and ideas. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Peacocks, Picasso, and parental investment: The effects of romantic motives on creativity.

Four experiments explored the effects of mating motivation on creativity. Even without other incentives to be creative, romantic motives enhanced creativity on subjective and objective measures. For men, any cue designed to activate a short-term or a long-term mating goal increased creative displays; however, women displayed more creativity only when primed to attract a high-quality long-term mate. These creative boosts were unrelated to increased effort on creative tasks or to changes in mood or arousal. Furthermore, results were unaffected by the application of monetary incentives for creativity. These findings align with the view that creative displays in both sexes may be linked to sexual selection, qualified by unique exigencies of human parental investment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Professional Preparation: A Course That Successfully Teaches Needed Skills Using Different Pedagogical Techniques

To bridge a gap we perceive to exist between the traditionally educated engineer, who is skilled primarily in high tech, and the broader trained engineer being called for by industry, we have developed a senior level course entitled Professional Preparation. This course is built around a group design project, but also includes exposure to a wide variety of needed skills such as problem solving, creative thinking, ethics, writing to learn, producing documentation and making oral and written reports. Student and employer reaction to the course is uniformly enthusiastic. Data collected from a survey of over 400 of our graduates shows a marked difference in their perception of the importance of and their educational preparation in specific skills with additional differences between those who took this course and those who did not.     

Understanding design: Artificial intelligence as an explanatory paradigm

A substantial part of the intellectual content of what H A Simon called the ‘sciences of the artificial’ is contained in the activity we calldesign. A central aim ofdesign theory is to construct testable, explanatory models of the design process that will serve to enhance our understanding of how artifacts are, or can be, designed. In this paper, we discuss how some of the basic concepts underlying the discipline ofartificial intelligence (ai) can serve to provide anexplanatory paradigm for understanding design. We present an AI-based model of the design process and describe some of the implications of this model for our understanding of design — including that aspect of it we call ‘invention’.