Creative thinking is a primary driver of innovation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), allowing students and practitioners to generate novel hypotheses, flexibly connect information from diverse sources, and solve ill-defined problems. To foster creativity in STEM education, there is a crucial need for assessment tools for measuring STEM creativity that educators and researchers can apply to test how different teaching approaches impact scientific creativity in undergraduate education. In this work, we introduce the Scientific Creative Thinking Test (SCTT). The SCTT includes three subtests that assess cognitive skills important for STEM creativity: generating hypotheses, research questions, and experimental designs. In five studies with young adults, we demonstrate the reliability and validity of the SCTT - including test-retest reliability and convergent validity with measures of creativity and academic achievement - as well as measurement invariance across race/ethnicity and gender. In addition, we present a method for automatically scoring SCTT responses, training the large language model Llama 2 to produce originality scores that closely align with human ratings - demonstrating STEM-specific, automated creativity assessment for the first time. The full SCTT, along with the code to automatically score it, are available on a repository in the Open Science Framework.

The role of top-down control in divergent creativity remains heavily debated. An outstanding question about the state dynamics of creativity concerns acute shifts between heightened and lowered creative states. Particularly, do transitions between creative states incur a “switch cost” as observed in other domains of cognition? Prior research showed that asymmetric switch costs are often incurred such that reaction time is asymmetrically slower when participants switch from a task involving more top-down control to a task involving less top-down control. We tested the hypothesis that frequent acute transitions from creativity-cued responding (associated with heightened creative state) to uncued responding (associated with lowered creative state) would incur an asymmetric switch cost such that uncued responding would be disproportionately impacted by state changes. We utilized the “thin slices” verb generation task in a task-switching paradigm. Consistent with the hypothesis of asymmetric switch costs in shifts between creative states, we observed a substantial switch cost when switching from creativity-cued trials to uncued trials, but no switch cost when switching from uncued trials to creativity-cued trials. These findings provide indirect evidence that heightened creative states may require substantially more top-down control than lowered creative states, supporting the theory that divergent creativity requires increased top-down control.

Novelty and appropriateness are two fundamental components of creativity. However, the way in which novelty and appropriateness are separated at behavioral and neural levels remains poorly understood. In the present study, we aim to distinguish behavioral and neural bases of novelty and appropriateness of creative idea generation. In alignment with two established theories of creative thinking, which respectively, emphasize semantic association and executive control, behavioral results indicate that novelty relies more on associative abilities, while appropriateness relies more on executive functions. Next, employing a connectome predictive modeling (CPM) approach in resting-state fMRI data, we define two functional network-based models—dominated by interactions within the default network and by interactions within the limbic network—that respectively, predict novelty and appropriateness (i.e., cross-brain prediction). Furthermore, the generalizability and specificity of the two functional connectivity patterns are verified in additional resting-state fMRI and task fMRI. Finally, the two functional connectivity patterns, respectively mediate the relationship between semantic association/executive control and novelty/appropriateness. These findings provide global and predictive distinctions between novelty and appropriateness in creative idea generation.

Creative thinking is important for success in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Yet creativity in STEM is perhaps the most under-researched question in the creativity literature, with little known about the neurocognitive mechanisms supporting scientific creative thinking abilities, such as hypothesis generation. In the present functional magnetic resonance imaging study, undergraduate STEM majors (n = 47) completed a scientific hypothesis generation task (thinking of novel/plausible explanations for hypothetical scenarios) and a control task (thinking of synonyms to replace a word in a hypothetical scenario). Multivariate pattern analysis identified a whole-brain network supporting hypothesis generation, including hubs of the default (posterior cingulate cortex [PCC]), salience (right anterior insula [AI]), and semantic control (left inferior frontal gyrus [IFG]) networks. Using these network hubs as seed regions, we found increased between-network functional connectivity during hypothesis generation, including stronger coupling between semantic control (IFG) and posterior default regions (PCC and bilateral angular gyrus) and stronger coupling between salience (AI) and default regions, alongside weaker within-network functional connectivity. Our results indicate that scientific creative thinking involves increased cooperation among the default, salience, and control networks-similar to creative thinking in other domains-potentially reflecting a coordination of spontaneous/generative and controlled/evaluative processes to construct original explanations for scientific phenomena.

Creativity often requires envisioning novel connections and combinations among elements in space, e.g., to invent a new product or generate a work of art. A relationship between spatial cognition and creativity has been demonstrated at both the behavioral and neural levels, but the exact neurocognitive mechanisms that bridge this connection remain unclear. The present study tested whether individual differences in functional activation in spatial cognition-implicated brain regions (specifically focusing on premotor and superior parietal cortex) during mental rotation were associated with figural creativity in a composite object creation task. Functional activation in premotor and superior parietal cortex during a classical spatial task (mental rotation; MRT) has previously been causally linked with dissociable components of spatial cognition: superior parietal activity with abstract spatial representation, and premotor activity with active spatial manipulation. The present findings indicate that individual differences in functional activation of both superior parietal cortex and premotor cortex during MRT were associated with individual differences in figural creativity. The present data thus provide new evidence of a correlation between the activity in spatial cognition-implicated brain regions and figural creativity, and suggest initial insights into particular components of spatial processing (both representation and manipulation) that may be related to creative ability.

We review several new and emerging methods of non-invasive neuromodulation and consider their potential to enhance creative cognition. This review covers the following techniques: transcranial electric stimulation (tES) (which includes transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS), and transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS)), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), transcranial focused ultrasound stimulation (tFUS), and neurofeedback training (NFT). For each technique, we explain the basic mechanism of action, review relevant research demonstrating its ability to enhance creative cognition, consider limitations and advantages, and suggest future research directions. Lastly, we offer broader conclusions and recommendations for the field of creativity neuromodulation.

Introduction Reasoning is a complex form of human cognition whose nature has long been debated. While a number of neurocognitive mechanisms for deductive reasoning have been offered, one of the most prominent accounts is Mental Model Theory (MMT). According to MMT, humans are able to manipulate and represent information for reasoning and problem solving by leveraging the brain’s evolved visuospatial resources. Thus, when solving deductive reasoning problems, reasoners build “mental models” of the essential pieces of information conveyed in the premises, with their relations to each other represented spatially—even when the information contained within a reasoning problem is not intrinsically spatial. Crucially, taking a spatially-based approach, such as building mental models, supports higher accuracy on deductive reasoning problems. However, no study has empirically tested whether explicitly training this mental modeling ability leads to improved deductive reasoning performance. Method Therefore, we designed the Mental Models Training App, a cognitive training mobile application which requires participants to complete increasingly difficult reasoning problems while using an external mental modeling tool. In this preregistered study (https://osf.io/4b7kn), we conducted a between-subjects experiment (N = 301) which compared the Mental Models Training App to 3 distinct control conditions in order to examine which specific components (if any) of the training were causally responsible for improved reasoning performance. Results Results demonstrate that, when compared to a passive control condition, the Mental Models Training App led to improvements in adults’ verbal deductive reasoning performance both during and after the training intervention. However, contrary to our preregistered hypotheses, the training-induced improvements were not significantly larger than the effects of the active control conditions—one which included adaptive practice of the reasoning problems, and one which included adaptive practice as well as a spatial alphabetization control task. Discussion Therefore, while the present results demonstrate the ability of the Mental Models Training App to enhance verbal deductive reasoning, they do not support the hypothesis that directly training participants mental modeling ability yields improved performance beyond the effects of adaptive practice of reasoning. Future research should examine the long-term effects of repeated usage of the Mental Models Training App, as well as transfer effects to other forms of reasoning. Finally, we present the Mental Models Training App as a free mobile application available on the Apple App store (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mental-models-training/id1664939931), in the hope that this translational research may be utilized by the general public to improve their reasoning ability.

Extensive evidence and theory suggest that the development of motor skills during infancy and early childhood initiates a "developmental cascade" for cognitive abilities, such as reading and math. Motor skills are closely connected with the development of spatial cognition, an ability that supports deductive reasoning. Despite the linkage between motor skills and spatial cognition, and spatial cognition with deductive reasoning, no research has explored the developmental connection between early motor skills and reasoning ability, a plausible pathway through which the developmental cascade operates. Drawing data from the 1970 British Cohort Study (N = 1,233; 95% British, 5% other race/ethnicity; 54% male, 46% female; 7% low income, 80% middle income, 12% high income), this study investigated whether there was a relationship between gross and fine motor skills in infancy (22 months of age) and early childhood (42 months of age) and visuospatial deductive reasoning in adolescence (at 10 and 16 years of age). Results indicated that fine but not gross motor skills during early childhood positively predicted reasoning in adolescence. Critically, the fine motor-reasoning association mediated the previously observed link between early fine motor skills and adolescent reading and math ability. These results deepen our understanding of developmental cascade theory and mental model theory by identifying visuospatial reasoning (i.e., mental modeling) as a potential mechanism through which motor skills initiate cognitive development and academic success in reading and math. These findings also highlight the importance of early intervention programs targeting motor skills and illuminate the impact of those interventions on later cognitive and academic skills. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The brain’s modular functional organization facilitates adaptability. Modularity has been linked with a wide range of cognitive abilities such as intelligence, memory, and learning. However, much of this work has (1) considered modularity while a participant is at rest rather than during tasks conditions and/or (2) relied primarily on lab-based cognitive assessments. Thus, the extent to which modularity can provide information about real-word behavior remains largely unknown. Here, we investigated whether functional modularity during resting-state and task-based fMRI was associated with academic learning (measured by GPA) and ability (measured by PSAT) in a large sample of high school students. Additional questions concerned the extent to which modularity differs between rest and task conditions, and across spatial scales. Results indicated that whole-brain modularity during task conditions was significantly associated with academic learning. In contrast to prior work, no such associations were observed for resting-state modularity. We further showed that differences in modularity between task conditions and resting-state varied across spatial scales. Taken together, the present findings inform how functional brain network modularity – during task conditions and while at rest – relate to a range of cognitive abilities.

Current debate surrounds the promise of neuroscience for education, including whether learning-related neural changes can predict learning transfer better than traditional performance-based learning assessments. Longstanding debate in philosophy and psychology concerns the proposition that spatial processes underlie seemingly nonspatial/verbal reasoning (mental model theory). If so, education that fosters spatial cognition might improve verbal reasoning. Here, in a quasi-experimental design in real-world STEM classrooms, a curriculum devised to foster spatial cognition yielded transfer to improved verbal reasoning. Further indicating a spatial basis for verbal transfer, students’ spatial cognition gains predicted and mediated their reasoning improvement. Longitudinal fMRI detected learning-related changes in neural activity, connectivity, and representational similarity in spatial cognition–implicated regions. Neural changes predicted and mediated learning transfer. Ensemble modeling demonstrated better prediction of transfer from neural change than from traditional measures (tests and grades). Results support in-school “spatial education” and suggest that neural change can inform future development of transferable curricula.

The rapid evolution of technology and automation today underscores the importance of understanding and facilitating human creativity. Although the psychological science of creativity is a relatively young field, significant progress has been made in recent years, and researchers are increasingly translating their work from the lab to real-world settings, from schools to the workforce. The articles in this special issue outline recent trends in translating creativity science to the wild, namely: studying creativity in real-world samples and contexts; applying cognitive psychology and neuroscience perspectives beyond the lab; and understanding the environmental factors that foster creativity. These advances improve the psychological science of creativity by increasing ecological validity, strengthening our definitional understanding of creativity and reminding us why creativity research matters.

Relational reasoning is a complex form of human cognition involving the evaluation of relations between mental representations of information. Prior studies have modified stimulus properties of relational reasoning problems and examined differences in difficulty between different problem types. While subsets of these stimulus properties have been addressed in separate studies, there has not been a comprehensive study, to our knowledge, which investigates all of these properties in the same set of stimuli. This investigative gap has resulted in different findings across studies which vary in task design, making it challenging to determine what stimulus properties make relational reasoning—and the putative formation of mental models underlying reasoning—difficult. In this article, we present the Multidimensional Relational Reasoning Task (MRRT), a task which systematically varied an array of stimulus properties within a single set of relational reasoning problems. Using a mixed-effects framework, we demonstrate that reasoning problems containing a greater number of the premises as well as multidimensional relations led to greater task difficulty. The MRRT has been made publicly available for use in future research, along with normative data regarding the relative difficulty of each problem.

Creative cognition has been consistently associated with functional connectivity between frontoparietal control and default networks. However, recent research identified distinct connectivity dynamics for subnetworks within the larger frontoparietal system-one subnetwork (FPCNa) shows positive coupling with the default network and another subnetwork (FPCNb) shows negative default coupling-raising questions about how these networks interact during creative cognition. Here we examine frontoparietal subnetwork functional connectivity in a large sample of participants (n=171) who completed a divergent creative thinking task and a resting-state scan during fMRI. We replicated recent findings on functional connectivity of frontoparietal subnetworks at rest: FPCNa positively correlated with the default network and FPCNb negatively correlated with the default network. Critically, we found that divergent thinking evoked functional connectivity between both frontoparietal subnetworks and the default network, but in different ways. Using community detection, we found that FPCNa regions showed greater co-assignment to a default network community. However, FPCNb showed overall stronger functional connectivity with the default network-reflecting a reversal of negative connectivity at rest-and the strength of FPCNb-default network connectivity correlated with individual creative ability. These findings provide novel evidence of a behavioral benefit to the cooperation of typically anticorrelated brain networks.

A central challenge for creativity research-as for all areas of experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience-is to establish a mapping between constructs and measures (i.e., identifying a set of tasks that best captures a set of creative abilities). A related challenge is to achieve greater consistency in the measures used by different researchers; inconsistent measurement hinders progress toward shared understanding of cognitive and neural components of creativity. New resources for aggregating neuroimaging data, and the emergence of methods for identifying structure in multivariate data, present the potential for new approaches to address these challenges. Identifying meta-analytic structure (i.e., similarity) in neural activity associated with creativity tasks might help identify subsets of these tasks that best reflect the similarity structure of creativity-relevant constructs. Here, we demonstrated initial proof-of-concept for such an approach. To build a model of similarity between creativity-relevant constructs, we first surveyed creativity researchers. Next, we used NeuroSynth meta-analytic software to generate maps of neural activity robustly associated with tasks intended to measure the same set of creativity-relevant constructs. A representational similarity analysis-based approach identified particular constructs-and particular tasks intended to measure those constructs-that positively or negatively impacted the model fit. This approach points the way to identifying optimal sets of tasks to capture elements of creativity (i.e., dimensions of similarity space among creativity constructs), and has long-term potential to meaningfully advance the ontological development of creativity research with the rapid growth of creativity neuroscience. Because it relies on neuroimaging meta-analysis, this approach has more immediate potential to inform longer-established fields for which more extensive sets of neuroimaging data are already available.

Creative thinking drives progress not only in the arts but also, and perhaps especially, in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and it is expected to become even more valuable than technical skill as artificial intelligence outpaces human cognition. Fostering creative thinkers has become a primary focus of educators. Educationally relevant anxieties, like math anxiety, have been shown to substantially impact specific forms of achievement and engagement, both in school and in career pursuits. Identifying these anxieties has led to promising interventions to enable affected individuals to reach their potential. Somewhat surprisingly, however, the possibility of anxiety specific to creative thinking is, to our knowledge, unexplored. In this article, across multiple samples, we tested the viability of creativity anxiety as a construct. We first created a new measure, the Creativity Anxiety Scale (CAS), demonstrating validity, internal reliability, and specificity. Applying the CAS revealed that creativity-specific anxiety predicted individual differences in creative achievement and attitudes toward creativity over and above effects of general anxiety. Moreover, across diverse content domains, from science to arts, anxiety was greater for situations that required creativity than similar situations that did not. Notably, this effect was especially pronounced in women. These findings suggest that creativity anxiety may have wide-reaching impacts and distinguish creativity anxiety from anxiety about noncreative aspects of performance. Establishing creativity anxiety as a novel construct, and the CAS as a valid measurement instrument, opens a new avenue of research that promises to deepen basic understanding of creative cognition and inform development of interventions to enable greater achievement of creative potential. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Recent research indicates that transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) of specific brain regions can successfully improve various forms of creative cognition. Although the endeavor to increase human creative capacity is intriguing from a neuroscientific perspective, and of interest to the general public, it raises numerous neuroethico-legal and social issues (NELSI). This review explores these issues by considering (a) whether using brain stimulation to improve creative cognition qualifies as a ‘treatment’ or an ‘enhancement,’ (b) how direct-to-consumer (DTC) and do-it-yourself (DIY) use of tES should be regarded and regulated, and (c) what the developing landscape of creativity-related neurostimulation could (and should) become.

Much of creativity research has focused on the constructs of divergent and convergent thinking. In this review, we address key gaps in extant empirical understanding of these constructs and offer suggestions for future research to parse their respective contributions to creative cognition. Furthermore, we consider the construct validity of the psychometric tasks most commonly used to measure these types of thinking: The Alternative Uses Task and the Remote Associates Test. We underscore that, although these tasks frequently are used to assay these constructs separately, they actually involve mixtures of the two constructs together. We conclude that additional measurement development and factor analytic research is necessary to delineate the separability and interdependence of divergent and convergent thinking as components of creativity.