Creative Thought

The human mind is a marvel. It allows us to experience life through managing our senses, it directs our emotions, it maintains our bodies, and it has produced each technological, medical, and societal advancement in human history. As is well known, it contains billions of neurons, each capable of holding an event or sensation for later recall. In order to allow humans to occupy a dominant role in the world, it is designed for maximum efficiency in the areas of communicating and survival, and it is here that we encounter the first signs of the limitations of the mind. When we ask the mind to perform tasks that are less directly related to its core functions, the very same traits that act as facilitators turn into hindrances. Creative thought is one such task…the mind excels at recording experiences and storing them in long term memory as what is termed “knowledge” and can later be rapidly searched to identify opportunities for advancement or countering perceived threats, but creative thinking must extent beyond the known. Breaking free of the limitations of the mind requires external assistance, which can be effectively offered through the use of information visualization.

The demand for creative output exists within almost all spheres of human experience. Regardless of the nature of the task, there are common cognitive requirements that characterize this mode of thought. Once tasked with engaging in the creative process, the creator and the eventual output will move through a number of stages. The initial preparation stage sees the creator assembling the raw materials that will be used to address the task, such as understanding and evaluating previous efforts. As the creator enters the second incubation stage, the process typically recedes to the subconscious, where associations between the raw data gathered in the first stage can be made. Ideally, this phase will see the crystallization of creative thought into a rough solution in the third illumination phase. The final verification phase involves the refining and communicating of the new thought. These four phases can be arguably combined into two categories, unconscious brainstorming and conscious focusing. An examination of these two models will lead us to understand how the mind’s strengths and weaknesses can be manipulated through visualization.
Models of the first category will focus on the presence of associational mechanisms as related to creative success. This mode of thought is more intuitive, and can reveal connections that are not obvious, but may contain potential solutions. However, the mind does not predictably enter this spontaneous state of defocused attention. Models of the second category will be constructed on the premise that “the expression of a creative insight requires a high level of skill, knowledge, and/or technique that depends upon continuous problem solving” (Dietrich 2004). This focused mode of thought, while potentially more manageable and therefore predictable (i.e. applying a trial and error approach), can limit the amount of raw data available in working memory to about four items, which presumably affects the level of innovative thought that is possible. Research has also shown that performing at a high level of concentrated thought over time is draining to the attentional system, and cannot be sustained. It is further suggested that these two categories may not be mutually exclusive, but may be cyclical phases of a single, integrative model.

Stay tuned for the first phase, Brainstorming.