A thematic study of creativity research in Spain within the social sciences and psychology / Un estudio temático de la investigación en creatividad en España en las ciencias sociales y psicología

La creatividad se está convirtiendo en una habilidad necesaria en un mundo donde los robots superan cada vez más a las personas en las rutinas diarias. Para desarrollar eficientemente el campo de investigación de la creatividad, los académicos necesitan saber dónde están. Este artículo utiliza un enfoque bibliométrico para estudiar temas y características de la investigación en creatividad en España. Los resultados indican que la producción ha ido creciendo durante las últimas décadas. En comparación con la psicología, la creatividad en las ciencias sociales parece ser un área poco citada, local y endogámica. Para las ciencias sociales, los temas motores en la última década fueron a) la creatividad en niños y estudiantes en un entorno educativo, b) la innovación y creación de conocimiento en un entorno laboral, y c) las ciudades creativas. Los temas motores en psicología han sido a) las características individuales para generar conocimientos (por ejemplo, habilidades, improvisación, funciones ejecutivas) y b) la inteligencia emocional. Sugerimos algunos temas para futuras investigaciones, como la colaboración creativa en un entorno virtual, la co-creación de valor, y cómo las máquinas pueden ayudar a los humanos a impulsar su creatividad.(AU)

Creativity is becoming one necessary human skill in a world where robots increasingly outperform people in daily routines. In order to efficiently develop creativity as a research field, scholars need to know where they are.We employed a bibliometric approach to study themes and characteristics of creativity research in Spain.The results indicated that publication production in the field has been growing during the last dec-ades. Compared to psychology, creativity in the social sciences seemed to be an undercited, local,and endogamic area. For social sciences, motor themes in the last decade were a) creativity in children and students in the educational environment, b) innovation and knowledge creation in a work-ing environment, and c) cities and creativity. The motor themes in psy-chology were a) individual characteristics for generating insights (e.g., skills, improvisation, executive functions) and b) emotional intelligence. We sug-gest some themes for future research, such as creative collaboration in vir-tual environments, value co-creation, and how machines can help humans boost their creativity.(AU)

Machine learning revealed symbolism, emotionality, and imaginativeness as primary predictors of creativity evaluations of western art paintings.

Creativity is a compelling yet elusive phenomenon, especially when manifested in visual art, where its evaluation is often a subjective and complex process. Understanding how individuals judge creativity in visual art is a particularly intriguing question. Conventional linear approaches often fail to capture the intricate nature of human behavior underlying such judgments. Therefore, in this study, we employed interpretable machine learning to probe complex associations between 17 subjective art-attributes and creativity judgments across a diverse range of artworks. A cohort of 78 non-art expert participants assessed 54 artworks varying in styles and motifs. The applied Random Forests regressor models accounted for 30% of the variability in creativity judgments given our set of art-attributes. Our analyses revealed symbolism, emotionality, and imaginativeness as the primary attributes influencing creativity judgments. Abstractness, valence, and complexity also had an impact, albeit to a lesser degree. Notably, we observed non-linearity in the relationship between art-attribute scores and creativity judgments, indicating that changes in art-attributes did not consistently correspond to changes in creativity judgments. Employing statistical learning, this investigation presents the first attribute-integrating quantitative model of factors that contribute to creativity judgments in visual art among novice raters. Our research represents a significant stride forward building the groundwork for first causal models for future investigations in art and creativity research and offering implications for diverse practical applications. Beyond enhancing comprehension of the intricate interplay and specificity of attributes used in evaluating creativity, this work introduces machine learning as an innovative approach in the field of subjective judgment.

Mathematical expertise: the role of domain-specific knowledge for memory and creativity.

In contrast to traditional expertise domains like chess and music, very little is known about the cognitive mechanisms in broader, more education-oriented domains like mathematics. This is particularly true for the role of mathematical experts' knowledge for domain-specific information processing in memory as well as for domain-specific and domain-general creativity. In the present work, we compared 115 experts in mathematics with 109 gender, age, and educational level matched novices in their performance in (a) a newly developed mathematical memory task requiring encoding and recall of structured and unstructured information and (b) tasks drawing either on mathematical or on domain-general creativity. Consistent with other expertise domains, experts in mathematics (compared to novices) showed superior short-term memory capacity for complex domain-specific material when presented in a structured, meaningful way. Further, experts exhibited higher mathematical creativity than novices, but did not differ from them in their domain-general creativity. Both lines of findings demonstrate the importance of experts' knowledge base in processing domain-specific material and provide new insights into the characteristics of mathematical expertise.

Economic geography of innovation: The effect of gender-related aspects of co-inventor networks on country and regional innovation.

This paper focuses on the analysis of the effects of inventor networks on country and regional innovation. We use data from an OECD inventor database that spans more than forty years to build collaboration networks in which the network nodes are countries and regions, and linkages are patents produced by inventors from different regions and countries. We first investigate the network that includes all inventors and then analyze the network focusing on women inventors. We argue that both country and regional-level network centrality positively affect country and regional innovation (with stronger effects at the country level), and centrality in collaborations that involve women has an additional positive impact. We also find that women inventors' share in the pool of inventors is positively associated with innovation quality both at the county and regional levels. Furthermore, our findings indicate that in the network of women inventors, countries and regions that are in cohesive clusters (formed by repeated interactions between interconnected actors) show stronger innovation performance. Our study also highlights important nuances between country-level and region-level effects.

Engaging the creative heArts of nurse educators: a novel conceptual model.

OBJECTIVES: Nurse educators are increasingly challenged in preparing future nurses to be creative thinkers. The purpose of this innovative quality improvement initiative is to share nursing students' interpretations of the value arts-based pedagogy (ABP) brings to their nursing practice. METHODS: Braun and Clarke's approach to thematic analysis was utilized to identify and report patterns of ideas within learners' interpretations of engaging in an ABP assignment. RESULTS: The analysis of students' interpretations led to the creation of a novel conceptual model to encourage and support nurse educators in the use of innovative ABP approaches. CONCLUSIONS: ABP can be seamlessly integrated within teaching and learning methodologies to cultivate meaningful student learning. IMPLICATIONS FOR INTERNATIONAL AUDIENCE: The intent of the conceptual model is to encourage and support nurse educators in the use of innovative ABP approaches designed for engaging nursing students in active, creative, and challenging learning environments.

The Manic Idea Creator? A Review and Meta-Analysis of the Relationship between Bipolar Disorder and Creative Cognitive Potential.

Even though a relationship between psychopathology and creativity has been postulated since the time of ancient Greece, systematic meta-analyses on this topic are still scarce. Thus, the meta-analysis described here can be considered the first to date that specifically focuses on the relationship between creative potential, as measured by divergent thinking, and bipolar disorder, as opposed to psychopathology in general. An extensive literature search of 4670 screened hits identified 13 suitable studies, including a total of 42 effect sizes and 1857 participants. The random-effects model showed an overall significant, positive, yet diminutively small effect (d = 0.11, 95% CI: [0.002, 0.209], p = 0.045) between divergent thinking and bipolar disorder. A handful of moderators were examined, which revealed a significant moderating effect for bipolar status, as either euthymic (d = 0.14, p = 0.043), subclinical (d = 0.17, p = 0.001), manic (d = 0.25, p = 0.097), or depressed (d = -0.51, p < 0.001). However, moderator analyses should be treated with caution because of the observed confounding of moderators. Finally, none of the employed methods for publication-bias detection revealed any evidence for publication bias. We discuss further results, especially regarding the differences between subclinical and clinical samples.

Psilocybin's effects on cognition and creativity: A scoping review.

BACKGROUND: Research on psilocybin has become increasingly popular during the current psychedelic renaissance, which began in the early 1990s. Psilocybin's effects on mental health are promising and there are ongoing efforts to investigate its clinical implementation and its effects on cognition. AIMS: The purpose of this study is to report trends in publications, methods, and findings from research examining the effects of psilocybin on cognition and creativity in adults. METHODS: We conducted an Open Science Framework preregistered scoping review, guided by the JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis, on literature pertaining to psilocybin's effects on cognition and creativity. RESULTS/OUTCOMES: In the 42 included studies, psilocybin was primarily administered orally (83%) in a bodyweight-adjusted manner (74%) to healthy participants (90%). Of the few studies that explicitly reported safety outcomes (26%), only one reported serious adverse reactions. During the acute phase post-intake (i.e., minutes to hours), macrodoses tended to impair cognitive performance and creativity, whereas microdoses tended toward creative enhancement. The few macrodosing studies that included post-acute measures (i.e., 1-85 days) reported primarily null but some positive effects. CONCLUSIONS/INTERPRETATION: This scoping review identified a time-based variation of psilocybin macrodosing effects on cognition and creativity, in which impairment may be observed early post-intake but withdraw over time, and some positive effects may emerge afterward. These findings are limited by methodological concerns and inadequate assessment of long-term effects. We therefore recommend that future psilocybin research be conducted according to existing guidelines and include well-validated measures of cognition and creativity at multiple timepoints.

Does ASMR propensity reflect a mentally flexible mindset? Exploring the relationship between ASMR propensity, transliminality, emotional contagion, schizotypal traits, roleplaying ability, and creativity.

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is an alternative state of consciousness characterised by changes in affect, feelings of relaxation, and tingling sensations on the body. Online videos designed to stimulate ASMR in viewers have become increasingly popular. Although there is evidence that ASMR may improve sleep, emotion regulation, and relaxation, the current understanding of ASMR propensity remains limited. This study examined whether a mentally flexible cognitive style may underlie the ability to experience ASMR. Undergraduate students (N = 376) completed an online survey involving a series of self-report questionnaires and two performance-based creative ability tasks. Findings did not provide support for an overall mentally flexible mindset, however, transliminality, emotional contagion susceptibility, positive schizotypal traits, and roleplaying ability all significantly positively predicted ASMR propensity. These findings suggest that ASMR propensity represents several possible underlying cognitive styles relating to enhanced imagination and perceptual ability, and cannot be simply characterised by mental flexibility.

Creativity, pursuit and epistemic tradition.

This paper revisits the standard definition of scientific creativity in the contemporary philosophical literature. The standard definition of creativity says that there are two necessary, and jointly sufficient, conditions for creativity, novelty and value. This paper proposes to characterize the value condition of creativity in terms of "pursuitworthiness". The notion of pursuitworthiness, adopted from the recent debate on scientific pursuit in philosophy of science, refers to a form of prospective epistemic worth. It indicates that a certain object (such as a scientific hypothesis) is promising or has the potential to be epistemically fertile in the future, if further investigated. To support the claim that creative scientific instances are, qua creative, valuable in the sense of pursuitworthy, three examples of creative hypotheses taken from the history of the geosciences are introduced: MacCulloch's continuity hypothesis in mid-19th-century geology, Baron et al.'s phylogenetic hypothesis in contemporary paleontology, and the widely discussed Anthropocene hypothesis.

Quadrato motor training (QMT) influences IL-1ß expression and creativity: Implications for inflammatory state reduction and cognitive enhancement.

Mind-body practices and meditation have been increasingly studied in recent years due to their beneficial effects on cognition, and physical and psychological health. Growing evidence suggests that these practices could be utilized as interventions to impact age-related biological processes, such as cognitive decline, inflammation, and homeostatic dysregulation. Indeed, it has been reported that mindful meditation may induce neuroplasticity in brain regions involved in control of attention, emotional regulation, and self-awareness. In the current research we studied the effects of a recently developed movement meditation, named the Quadrato Motor Training (QMT), on the proinflammatory cytokine Interleukin-1beta (IL-1ß), utilizing a pre-post design. In addition to its role in the immune system, IL-1ß is also an important mediator of neuroimmune responses related to sickness behavior, and plays a role in complex cognitive processes, such as synaptic plasticity, neurogenesis, and neuromodulation. Thirty healthy participants were divided in two groups, one performing QMT for 2 months, and one passive control group. Salivary IL-1ß expression was examined by ELISA to measure protein levels and by qRT-PCR to quantify mRNA. In addition, the methylation profile of the IL-1ß promoter was examined. All participants further conducted the Alternate Uses Task (AUT) and Hidden Figure Test (HFT), to measure their creativity and spatial cognition. The results showed that, following QMT practice, IL-1ß protein level decreased and creativity increased, compared to the control group. These data demonstrate that QMT may help reduce inflammatory states and promote cognitive improvement, highlighting the importance of non-pharmacological approaches to health and well-being.

Letting it go: The interplay between mind wandering, mindfulness, and creativity.

A creative idea is always appreciated. However, it is still unclear as to what helps people in coming up with creative ideas. The current chapter explores how mind wandering, mindfulness and meditation influence creative ideation. Most specifically, we explore the cognition behind each of these faculties and how they interact to enable us in navigating across our internal and external environments constantly. In this chapter, we also discuss an empirical study that examines mind-wandering tendencies in two types of creativity tasks-convergent and divergent, by manipulating task difficulty. The findings of our study provide evidence in support of the process theories that indicate mind wandering is based on the nature of creative tasks being performed and mind wandering tendencies are higher in the divergent compared to the convergent task. Finally, the chapter concludes with a discussion on how understanding the cognition of meditators provides insights to creative thought process and explores avenues of study for such complex and subjective cognitive faculties.

Personality traits and environment: The effects of observing visual art on verbal creativity.

Figurative language is one of the most prevalent expressions of verbal creativity, and use of novel metaphors is the most significant source of verbal innovation. As environmental and personality trait factors can impact creativity, the current study aimed to examine whether exposure to an environment rich in visual stimuli (artwork) and verbal stimuli (novel metaphors) contributes to verbal creativity, taking into account the personality trait of "openness to experience." Study participants (132) were divided into three groups: (1) a group exposed to a creative verbal environment (reading novel metaphors), (2) a group exposed to a visually creative environment (observing abstract and figurative artwork), and (3) a group not exposed to any creative environment. Participants completed personality questionnaire and a metaphor generation questionnaire that asked participants to describe 10 emotions using novel metaphors. Results showed the type of creative environment exposure had a graded effect on creativity (i.e., generation of novel metaphors): the non-exposed control group generated fewer novel than conventional metaphors, the group exposed to novel verbal metaphors produced a similar number of novel and conventional metaphors, and the group exposed to artwork produced more novel than conventional metaphors. This may imply that environments containing visually creative stimuli provide opportunities for silent contemplation which in turn evoke neuropsychological mechanisms related to creative processes. Furthermore, the finding that the trait of "openness to experience" and exposure to a visually creative environment contributed to greater generation of novel metaphors suggests that creativity may be dependent on both individual and environmental factors.

Evaluating the effects of episodic and semantic memory induction procedures on divergent thinking in younger and older adults.

Evidence suggesting that episodic specificity induction improves divergent thinking performance in younger and older adults has been taken as indicative of the role of declarative memory processes in creativity. A series of studies were carried out to verify the specificity of such findings by investigating the effects of several novel episodic and semantic memory induction procedures on a widely employed measure of divergent creative thinking (the Alternate Uses Task), in comparison to a control induction and a no-induction baseline in both younger and older adults. There was no clear evidence for a specific role played by the induction of episodic or semantic memory processes in facilitating creative thinking across the three experiments, and the effects of the induction procedures (episodic, semantic and control) on divergent thinking were not comparable across age groups. On the other hand, higher levels of creativity were generally associated with older adults (60-80 years). In Experiments 2 and 3, older adults generated a greater number of responses (fluency), more unique responses (average originality, peak originality, creativity ratings) and more varied responses (flexibility) than younger adults (18-30 years). The findings are discussed in relation to the specificity of declarative memory operations and their impact on creative thinking, especially within the context of healthy ageing.

Scientific creativity and innovation ability and its determinants among medical postgraduate students in Fujian province of China: a cross sectional study.

BACKGROUND: Graduate education is the main approach to training high-level innovative elites. With the expansion of the scale of graduate education in China, it has gradually emerged that the lack of innovation ability of graduate students is recognized as the primary problem in graduate education. How to comprehensively improve the quality of postgraduate teaching has become the core task of educational reform and development. However, data about the current cultivation and development of the innovative ability of graduate students in China is limited. METHODS: A questionnaire survey was conducted among medical postgraduate students. Descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis methods were used to analyze the data to describe the current innovation ability in advanced medical education and potential influence factors. RESULTS: A total of 1241 medical students were surveyed, according to the results of questionnaire data analysis. The proportion of subjects who participated in the College Student's Entrepreneurship and Innovation program or any other scientific research programs are fairly high which are 46.82% and 29.20% respectively. Most of the participants are observed with high levels of self-motivation and active learning and have good performance in creative thinking. However, only a small number of participants (16.6%) reported academic achievements such as publications. Most of the students are satisfied with the current scientific research environment and think that the current postgraduate training system is qualified for the cultivation of innovation ability, and expects the inclusion of course specialized in systemic medicine and medical informatics in the curricula. Multiple logistic regression results showed that among the factors studied, gender, medical specialties, and types of master's degrees are associated with cognition & skills, academic performance, and creativity. CONCLUSIONS: It will be important to incorporate more techniques for creating and improving creativity in the curricula of the current postgraduate education, especially for courses such as systemic medicine and informatics. Guidance in earlier school life can stimulate creativity and an early introduction to scientific research work will facilitate innovative thinking and behavior. Scientific research programs such as the National Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training for the universities of PRC have been widely implemented in the undergraduate education system throughout the country. However, the training effectiveness of the current scientific research programs is worth improving.

Care as a creative practice: comics, dementia and graphic medicine.

Care paves efficient ways to sustain life during illness, nonetheless, caring for a chronically ill person is a hard, demanding, tedious and unglamorous work, often fraught with challenges. In contrast, creativity refers to a generative process that brings something new into existence. For instance, creativity implies a moment of discovery, the birth of new ideas, crossing existing boundaries among others. Perfusing creativity with care practices mitigates the difficult experiences, and aid in the healthy management of challenges put forth by the illness. The present article after elaborating on how creativity transforms care as a meaningful and constructive life-changing practice in the context of one of the chronic illnesses, dementia/AD, and briefing on graphic medicine-an interdisciplinary field of healthcare and comics, seeks to close-read Dana Walrath's Aliceheimer's: Alzheimer's Through the Looking Glass to demonstrate how care as creative practice provides a therapeutic direction when biomedical cure becomes impossible. The article investigates how such distinctive caring practices challenges the predominant perspective of dementia as a social death and aid in finding meaning in the alternative experiential realities of the person living with dementia. Further, the article also examines how these practices help in retaining the personhood and humanity of the care-receiver.

Representing creative thought: A representational similarity analysis of creative idea generation and evaluation.

Dual process theories of creativity suggest that creative thought is supported by both a generation phase, where unconstrained ideas are generated and combined in novel ways, and an evaluation phase, where those ideas are filtered for usefulness in context. Neurocognitively, both the default mode network (DMN) and the executive control network (ECN) have been implicated in generation and evaluation, respectively. Importantly, generating and evaluating ideas implies that the same information, reflected in patterns of neural activity, must be present in both phases, suggesting that information should be 'reinstated' (i.e. multidimensional patterns must reappear) within and/or between network nodes. In the present study, we used representational similarity analysis (RSA) to investigate the extent to which nodes of the DMN and ECN reinstate information between a generation phase, in which participants generated novel or appropriate word associations to single nouns, and an evaluation phase, where we presented the associations back to participants to evaluate them. We showed strong evidence for reinstatement within the ECN dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex during the novel association task, and within the DMN medial prefrontal cortex during the appropriate association task. We additionally showed between network reinstatement between the ECN dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex and the DMN posterior parietal cortex during the novelty task. These results demonstrate the importance of both within- and between-informational reinstatement for generating and evaluating ideas, and implicate both the DMN and ECN in dual process models of creativity.

COVID-19 Vaccination and Community Management: A Qualitative Study.

BACKGROUND: Nurses play key roles as vaccination agents and frontline workers who deal with prejudice and misinformation. This study examined the attitudes and perceptions of nursing students regarding corona-virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination and its social and institutional management. METHOD: This qualitative study consisted of an exploratory phase involving first- and fourth-year nursing students and a second phase using the PhotoVoice tool SHOWED mnemonic method followed by discussion groups with second-year nursing students. RESULTS: Three themes emerged: (1) hope tinged with fear; (2) too much information generating fear, uncertainty, and mistrust; and (3) leaders without recognition or voice. CONCLUSION: The results inform the body of knowledge in nursing science and enhance changes in clinical practice by providing new insights regarding the perceptions of nursing students on vaccination and its management, highlighting the need to train future nurses in health literacy and new ways to interact with community members. [J Nurs Educ. 2023;62(6):343-350.].