CREATIVITY-2
2. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CREATIVITY
2.1 Historical Background of Creativity
The interest in what is now commonly termed creativity, goes back to Galton's pioneering studies of intellectual characteristics of the men of genius. Galton as early as 1869 attempted examining the relationship between the gifted and hereditary factors - the first attempt of its kind at an empirical level for the study of human abilities. As a testimony to this uncharted area the word 'creativity' did not make its appearance in the Oxford English Dictionary as late as 1933. The year 1967 marked the first publication of the 'Journal of Creative Behaviour.' Then, there was an upsurge of interest in the creative processes in the first three decades of the 20th century, and the life histories and achievements of men like Mozart and Leonardo-Da-Vinci were thoroughly explored. However, the basic principles of measuring mental abilities were first pioneered by Charles Spearman in London and Alfred Binet in Paris. The whole area of study was given quite an impetus with the publication of Spearman's 'Creative mind' in 1930.
In the 1940s and SOs simple economics dictated an interest in the scientists, technologists and the creative processes they experienced and manipulated. With the advent of Sputnik in 1957 and the observation of Terman (1959) deploring the lack of recognition and encouragement of bright children in American schools, brought about considerable impact on research in creativity. During the 1950s and 1960s psychologists turned to the problem of precisely what makes up the creative personality. To Guilford mu st go the credit for having opened the floodgates, in his presidential address to the American psychology Association in 1950 he pointed out that, of the 121,000 titles in Psychological Abstracts upto 1950 only 186 dealt with creativity. His concern was that examination of the contents of intelligence tests reveal very little that is obviously of a creative nature. He stated that 'we must look well beyond the boundaries of IQ if we were to fathom the domain of creativity' and urged Psychologists to look at the factors in intelligence as a "commonwealth rather than a nation". He went on to design and validate a "Structure of Intellect Model." This model included two factors which opened the way for further research into the components of creativity. These factors he termed as convergent production and divergent production. He himself defined divergent production as generation of information from given Information where the emphasis is upon variety and quantity of output from the same source, whereas in convergent production the emphasis is on logic and procedure. Guilford saw divergent thinking as a factor in creativity. Later writers have tended to it as the factor or creativity itself. Since then efforts have been made in several directions towards an understanding of creativity like, the processes involved in the emergence of a creative product, the personality characteristics of creative individuals, the nature of the possible environmental influences on creativity, and the quality and type of the creative product itself. However, of late creativity has been viewed to possess the characteristics of uniqueness, surprise, usefulness and originality.
2.2 Concept of Creativity
Be that as it may, the concept of creativity despite enormous research, continues to confuse human mind and is yet to be defined in its perfect conceptual framework .The term creativity has its origin from the Latin word 'creare', meaning; to create. For Webster (1977) it is to originate, or to bring into exist n e something new.It is a complex, multifaceted and multivariant phenomenon of human behaviour. This complexity is perhaps, primarily due to its ellusive and abscure natur e. Creative behaviour by its very nature is spontaneous, versatile, inner directed and ordinarily not capable of being elicited at will. It is, therefore, unpredictable (Gutman,1967). and escapes manipulation and control Theories explaining creativity have changed from those that define it as the innovative combination of knowledge and imagination applied to the solution of problems to those that view it as an "unconscious process through which libidinal or aggressive energies are converted into culturally sanctioned behaviours" (Freud,1924). According to Kumar (1977), it is something akin to "an enigma wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." It is the term generally used to refer to" rare and unique talent in a particular field of endeavour" (Ausubel, 1963). For him creative achievements reflect a rare capacity for developing insights, sensitivities and appreciations in a circumscribed content area of intellectual or artistic activity. There is no universally accepted definition of this activity Dillon, as good as there is of intelligence (Getzels & 1973; Barron & Harrington, 1981). One reason for such sorry state of affair lies in the disagreement regarding aspect of its nature and development.
Definitions vary, modes of identification vary, theories vary, research methods and results vaty, what is generally agreed upon only is that, creative thinking is the 'highhest of mental functions' and creative production the peak of human achievements1(Getzels, 1988). Lack of agreement concerning the definition of creativity stems from the many different ways creativity manipulates itself and the behaviours associated with various forms of creative endeavours. As a consequence, during the 40 years a number of writers have attempted to define creativity in terms of the capacity to restructure the world in unusual conceptual terms or in terms of 'divergent thinking abilities' (Guilford, 1950) or in terms of 'ideational fluency' (Wallach, 1965). Many have defined creativity as 'the ability to make or otherwise bring into existance something new, 'whether a new solution to a problem, a new method or device or a new artistic object or form' (Torrance, 1962). Yet, others have defined creativity in terms of 'the process of change in the organisation of subjective life' (Ghiselin, 1952). It has also been defined in terms of the flash of insight, the transcendent sensation itself, without reference to whether it will result in any thing tangible or not. psychologists view creative thinking as one of the many kinds of thinking which range from "autistic fantasy and dreaming to logical reasoning" and to some extent to " partake of both the extremes" (Vernon,1970).
In the pursuit of an understanding of creativity one is bound to experience a kaleidoscopic vision of awe and confusion all at the same time. Due tot his prevailing take of unanimity regarding the definition of creativity, literature is replete with terms like genius, giftedness, talent, imagination, originality, ingenuity, discovery invention, intuition and proble m solving- which have been often used synonymously with Creativity. However, there is no complete agreement among those studying creativity as to what it really means (Freeman,et al,1971).
As a result, none of the existing definitions of creativity is immune from the objection that each emits some component vital to the other. A suggested omnibus definition of creative thinking is; the product has novelty and value for the thinker or the culture; the thinking is unconventional, highly motivated and persistent or of great intensity; the task involves a clear formulation of an initially vague and undefined problems (Newell et al,1962).
For the sake of convenience, the most widely applied definitions may therefore be classified according to the emphasis placed on the process, the product, the person or the press(environment) of creativity, which are the vantage points most oftenly discussed in creative theory and research.
Considering creativity as a process, when creativeness is viewed as the creation of new ideas, the problem of creativeness comes down at last to that of how exactly these new ideas originate and where do these ideas become creative in the process. This is as futile a question as to enquire at what stage the relationship between two individuals developed into love. However, much thought has been given to this aspect by psychologists and two major methods appear to be operative, one is primarily deductive- creativeness by direct frontal assult which consists inmarshalling out the widest possible array of facts and ideas and then carefully searching for hethertofore unrecognised relationships between them. This seems to be the method used by Edison and Einstein. But we can be sure that this is not the way which at least is the first step in creativity. Contrary to this it is much more common for a new idea to arise almost spontaneously in the mind, often seemingly out of nothing quite different, as in the case of Pioncar'e's insight in mathematics, who had been struggling for days with the problem of functions to no conclusions. One night after drinking coffee and being unable to sleep, ideas rose in his mind like ocean tides.
From a product - oriented stand point, the creative activity is dominated by an emphasis on achieving the product. Nevertheless there is a tendency to confuse creativity with the end result of the creative process. We tend to think of the creative person in terms of what he/she has produced. Just as a love relationship may or may not culminate in to marriage, so also creativity may or may not culminate in a tangible end product. On the other hand it may well culminate in some totally unexpected and a new end product.
As regards the creative person is concerned, there is yet to emerge a universally accepted creative profile, embodying the traits which distinguish him from a non- creative one. Further, as for as the creative press or environment is concerned, though we are aware that a large number of environmental factors affect creativity, we are perhaps more in dark about the environmental conditions which facilitate creativity than we are about any other aspect of the problem.
One more important element that must be added to explain the concept of creativity is indeed imagination -"gaining the power to accumulate experience and to reason is not enough to make man truely creative, the great gift of 'imagination' is necessary which is perhaps his most distinctive trait, for it makes possible his creativeness. Creative imagination integrates different parts and moulds into new unity. It is an attempt to percive unity and diversity, to creat order and beautify choas". It is the ability to suggest new hypothesis, which opens vast and new avenues of thought (Deshmuk h,1990)
Another basic problem in defining creativity is the problem of criterion, in essence it. is simply the problem of how to identify the creative person or how to identify the creative worth of the product of an individual. This represents the most challenging aspects of all research on creativity, without establishing objective criteria all endevours at devising predictors, investigating personality and cognitive characteristics and venturing hypotheses about creative process are of questionable value. It is no exaggeration to say in the words of Taylor and Holland (1964) that there is no more crucial problem in creativity than the criterion problem.
Adding to the already existing confusion about creativity, Sternberg (1988) has gone yet one step further in his concept of 'triarchic mind' by defining and analysing three kinds of intelligence 'Internal', 'Experiential' and 'contexual'. According to him internal intelligence is the intelligence measureable by intelligence tests. Experiential intelligence is that which is associated with the original work or creativity and the third contextual intelligence is the street smartness type, the intelligence which helps to adapt to the new soroundings to change them or quit the situation
Thus, it may be said that the concept of creativity is so elusive, that all efforts at unravelling its nature are met with both rewards and disappointments - rewards in the sense that new horizons are made visible and disappointment in so far as, much remains ununderstood. One can see ample historical precedents in this regard, but the efforts to probe 'creativity' are just a peep through the key hole making visible only limited areas of the lives and processes of creative individuals and their work.
Inspite of the prevailing aweful situation the study of creative behaviour has not been neglected completely, yet,it has been confined to three aspects of creativity. Its phenomenal side, its productive thinking or problem solving and its composition of the traits of creativity. Despite the already substantial and increasing literature available regarding creativity, we still treat the concept as applicable only to performance in one or more of the arts to the exclusion of other types of achievements requiring inventiveness, originality and perfection. The term 'creative child' in becoming synonymous with the expression 'child with artistic talents' has limited our attempts to identify and foster cognitive abilities related to creative functioning in areas other than the arts . In most studies the word gifted is synonymous with the high IQ (Terman,1925).
The notion of giftedness has broadened only recently to include creativity, prior to this, inclusion in the gifted category depended solely on measured intelligence even though, the traditional IQ tests assessed only a few of man's thinking abilities. Thus , it is not the discovery of creativity which is new but the realization and appreciation that have the traditional and conventional tests of largely ignored this important aspect intelligence of human performance. Associated with this, increasing recognition of the shortcomings of the traditional IQ concept and the conventional IQ tests, ways of looking at human intellectual ability has emphasis on divergent thinking and a search for creativity.
Bartlett (1958) pointed out that the intelligence tests which emphasise correct solutions elicit 'closed thinking' and ignore 'open thinking'. Guilford (1950) suggested that, where as the usual kinds of tests concentrate on the production of the already learnt old responses to new situations as mechanical while they ignore fluency, flexibility and originality. Further, the deis satisfaction with the IQ concept in its present form is supported by the frequent failure of the usual tests to account for more than about one quarter of the variations in a class scores on tests of classroom achievement (Getzels and Jackson, 1962 ; Torrance, 1963).
If we were to move the focus of inquiry from the classroom setting, we might identify cognitive qualities defining giftedness for other situations just as the IQ for the classroom setting. Further, if we recognise that learning involves the production of novelty as well as the remembrance of course content-discovering as well as recalling, measures of creativity and IQ become appropriate.
2.3 Theories of Creativity
The variety of theoritical formulations reflect a key paradox of creative thinking (Getzels, 1964). A partinent and illuminating distinction has been made between the 'cognito' and 'intelligo' components of creative thought (Hadamard, 1954). Implicitly or explicitly, all the theoritical conceptions are based on the homeostatic model of self-maintenance, self development or self-expansion and the drive-or-tension reduction principle of behaviour against the modern system of a dynamic process (Stern, 1918; Margan, 1923; Allport, 1937).
The concept of creativity thus, underlies a series of theoritical hypothesations putforth by different authors and psychologists. They may be broadly classified into (i) traditional (ii) associationistic (iii) gestalten (iv) psychoanalytic (v) perceptual and (vi) neurophysiological theories.
1.Traditional logic Theory: Wertheimer (1962) suggests that traditionally there have been two approaches to the problem of creative thinking or productive thinking ; (i) traditional logic or deduction - on the basis of assertions, conditions inferences are drawn and are applied to test whether the certain formal inferences are valid or not. Certain combinations of propositions make it possible to drive 'new' correct propositions and logic establishes the various forms of syllogisms which guarantee correctness of the conclusion and (ii) the procedure of induction with its emphasis on experience and experimentation forms the next phase. The focus here is not on deduction but on gathering facts and observing their relationships, which culminate in general assumptions.
2. Associationism Theory: In classical formulation of associationism theory, thinking is held to be a chain of ideas or in modern terms a chain of stimuli and responses or a chain of behaviour elements, involving succession of ideas or behavioural items, Habits past experience and repeatation rather than reasoning are the essential factors of thinking.
As Wertheimer (1962) puts it, from the theory of associationism, the ability to think productively is the working of associative bonds and depends on the number of associations an individual has acquired. Mednick (1962) proposed this theory of creativity involving the building up of associations between stimuli and responses. A divergent or creative person is supposed to link stimuli with highly unlikely responses, in a skillful and effective manner which· are useful and memory does not play a major ·role here. Based on this principle, Mednick (1962) developed the test called", The Remote Associations Test" (RAT). Blake, and Scott, (1971) speakes on similar lines as Mednick does, regarding the solution of problems, and goes a step ahead by attributing transliminal perception to "Fourfold vision theory."
3. Gestalten Theory: Wertheimer (1962) further proposed a third theoritical formulation one sharply opposed to both traditional logic and classical associationism. Accordingly the thinking process does not proceed by either the logic or the connections of associative bonds but by the structuring of Gestalten. Generally speaking there is first a problem situation in which the actual process starts, and then after a number of steps, a second situation in the process ends and the problem is solved. The first problem situation is structurally incomplete, involves a gap or a structual trable, whereas the second solution is structually better , the gap is filled adequately and the structural trable disappears.
4. Psychoanalytic Theory: The most influencial, current systematic psychoanalytic approach theory to creative thinking Freud (1958) dealt with the the phenomenon of creative production in numerous contexts. He attributed creativity to repressed unconscious wishes, pregenital and libidinal urges and sublimation . According to him creativity has its genesis in conflicts, and the unconscious forces motivating the neurotic solutions. The psychic function and effect of creative behaviour is the discharge of pentup emotions resulting from conflicts until a tolerable level is reached. Creative thought drives from the elaboration of the "freely raising" fantasies and ideas related to day-dreaming and childhood play. The creative person accepts these freely raising ideas while the non-creative person suppresses them. It is when the unconscious processes become so to speak ego-syntonic, that we have the occasion for achievement of special perfection. The role of childhood experiences in creative production is emphasised.
Eissler (1962) observes that in the genius all psychic processes that support sublimatory processes are egosyntonic and belong to a special category of psychopathology which is essentially different from all other forms of psychopathology. Kubie (1958) states that creativity is blocked, distorted and corrupted by neuroses, thereby suggesting that neuroses and creativity are opposed. Jung(1938) viewed the entire artistic creativity in terms of "autonomous complex" which emerged from the unconscious as well as racial or collective unconscious. He endorsed Freud's view of creativity. For Adler (1938) it was the feeling of inferiority that formed the compensation drive in the creative artists.
5. Neo-psychoanalytic theory The salient point in the neo-psychoanalytic formation of creative behaviour as per Kris (1953) is "Ego regression" (Primitivization of ego functions) occurs not only when the ego is weak in sleep or in falling asleep, in fantasy, in intoxication and in the psychoses, but also during many types of creative processes. As Schachtel (1959) says, that creative behaviour is essentially "the product of a repressed libidinal or aggressive impulse and of a regression to infantile mode of thought or experience, to the primary process albeit in the primary process albeit in the service of the ego".
Kubie (1958) in a work significantly entitled'neurotic distortion of the creative process' represents this point of view, of stressing firmly on the psychoanalytic tradition. He draws a set of essential distinctions between"preconscious" "conscious" and "Unconscious" mental processes. The contribution of preconscious processes to creativity depends upon their freedom in gathering, assembling, comparing and reshuffling of ideas". He then argues that both the conscious and the unconsious processes act in such a way as to rigidify the preconsious process and thus render even the most potentially gifted person uncreative. Suler (1980) thought that the "preconsious is perhaps the area in which primary and secondary processes converge and in creativity is maximized."
6. Perceptual and Social Conception Theory: Schachtel (1959) is critical of both Freudian and post Freudian formulations of creative behaviour. He maintains that most useful approach to the riddle of creativity is not through the framework of psychoanalytic theory but throught the framework of perceptual theory. The freedom of primary thought process is due to openness in the encounter with the world. There are two modes of perceptual relatedness as the subject-centered or "autocentric" and object-centered or "allocentric." In the autocentric the emphasis is on how and what the person feels, but in the allocentric mode the emphasis is on what the object is like. In Schachtel's view both the motivation of the creative individual and the quality of his relation to the world are distinctive and quite different from psychoanalytic formulations.
7. Creativity as Intellectual Drive Rogers (1959) called creativity as an "innate orientation·", drive to "become his potentialities". For him "creative act is the natural behaviour of an organism." A child inventing a new game or Einstein formulating the theory of relat vity or a housewife experimenting a new sauce--are all creative. Maslow(1968) proposed that a creative man is one whose basic needs (physiological needs,esteem needs and the needs for self-actualization, safety needs, love,affection and belonging needs are met. He listed the following, regarding creative cognition: flash, inspiration, peak experience, hard work, unrelating criticism, and perfectionistic standards. Koestler(1964) called that, the "bisociation" principle is responsible for creative process. Bisociation is said to take place when a new idea sparks off in the functional clash between two unrelated concepts or dimentions of experience. "The idea that sparks off comes of as a surprise. Rothenberg and Albert (1971) emphasized" Janusian thinking " in creativity. By Janusian thinking they mean" the capacity to conceive and utilize two or more opposite or contradictory ideas, concepts or images simultaneously "which operate in art, literature, mathematics."
8. Neurophysiological Theory: This theory states that the brain, as a mechanical entity has a potential, a million times more powerful than any electronic counterpart (Osborn, 1960). This is supported by studies of Gazzaniga, et al., (1962).
2.4. Definitions of Creativity
Visualising creativity as a multivariate phenomenon, different perspectives in terms of product, process, person and or press have been adopted to define this complex phenomenon for investigations. This is reflected in the great diversity of definitions of the term "creativity" and a variety of meanings attached to it. For example Mcpherson (1960) collected 26 different definitions of creativity. It is true, that if creativity is to be studied scientifically, it must be defined in a way "that permits objective observation, measurement and evaluation." However, Mackinnon (1970) cautioned against accepting any single definition, for, it is a multifaceted phenomenon.
A few important definitions put forth by different authors are presented below."Creativity is the human attribute of constructive originality including such factors as associative and ideational fluency, adoptive and spontaneous flexibility and ability to elaborate in detail; it may be fostered or inhibited by teaching procedures; it is operationally defined by specific production such as inventions, paintings, discovery of principles etc., or by standardized· tests; beyond a fairly low minimum level it does not appear to correlate either positively or negatively with intelligence" (Good,1973). Simpson (1922) defined creativity as the "initiative which one manifests by his power to break away from the usual sequence of thought into an altogether different pattern of thought".
According to Radhakrishnan (1939) "Creativity is the spirit in man, which is responsible for all achievements which we have had in the world. When the fountain of spirit from which creative life of the individuals and society is fed, dry up, disease of every description, intellectual moral, and social breaks out."
Wilson (1951) while offering an operational definition of creativity, synthesized the diverse meanings of creative Process Prevalent at that time and described in terms of (a) outflow of individual or group thought, wherein a product structured; (b) the mental process of manipulating environment resulting in the production of new ideas, or relationships; (c) an action of the mind that produces a new idea or insight, or an object including a new form or arrangement of old elements; and (d) the capacity to produce through thought or imagination the capacity for original work.
Arnold (1953) points out that "Creativity involves the rearrangement of past experiences, with possibly some changes into new patterns to satisfy some expressed or implied need." Rogers (1954) defined.creative process as "emergence in action of novel relational product growing out of the uniqueness of the individual on, the one hand and the materials, events, circumstances of his life on the other."
A comprehensive definition of creativity in recent years has been that of Drevdahl (1956). He considered it as "the ability of human. being to produce conclusions of a discretionary kind which are essentially new and were previously unfamiliar to the one who produced them. Creativity according to him can mean, the formation as well as transference of known connections to new situations and forming of new correlations. A creative activity must be purposeful and directed not useless and fanciful, although product does not have to be immediately of practical use perfect nor absolutely complete. It can assume an literary or scientific form or be connected with the technology of a methodological kind."
Maslow (1959) said that, the phenomenological definition of creativity involves novelty or uniqueness. A product may be creative if it is new or novel to the individual involved, if it is his own creation, if it is expressive of him rather than dictated by some one else. It need not be either useful or unique. Its social recognition and cultural impact may be zero, but if it is a unique personal experience, it is creative.
Guilford (1959) emphasised divergent thinking as the essence of creativity, identified generalised sensitivity to problems, fluency, flexibility, originality, redefinition and elaboration as important components.
One of the references in the Indian context, defined creativity as Nava Navonmesha Shalini Pratibha that, which blossoms in an individual with newer and newer forms (Kumar,1960).
Mednicks (1962) while giving 395 different meanings of creativity, defined creative thinking as "the formation of associative elements into new combinations which either meet specific requirements or are in some way useful. The more mutually remote the elements of the new combnations are, the more creative the process or solution would be. The criceria here to be creative are the number of associational respnses as well as the uniqueness of the responses Bruner (1962) found newness, surprise and originality in creativity. For Mackinnon (1962) creativity is that which " involoves a response or an idea that is novel or at the very statistically infrequent and must to some ex ent be adoptive to, or of reality. It must serve to solve a problem fi.t a,situation, or accomplish some recognizable goal".
Torrance (1962) has a different view point. according to him" creative thinking is the process of sensing gaps or disturbing missing elements, forming ideas or hypotheses concerning them and testing these hypotheses." Subsequently, Torrance (1966) redefined creativity as"a process of becoming sensitive to problems, deficiencies, gaps of knowledge, missing elements:, disharmonies and so on; identifying the difficulty, searching for solutions, making guesses or formulating hypotheses and possibly modifying and re-testing them and finally communicating the results."
Barron (1965) stated that, creativity may be defined as "the ability to bring something new into existence. Fowler (1965) argued that "creative is a term of praise much affected by critics. It is presumably intended to mean original or sometimes like that, but is preferred because it is more vague and less usual-- It has been aptly called a 'Luscious, round and meaningless word' and is said to be a word much in honour that is the clinching term of approval from the school room to the advertiser's studio."
Wallach and Kogan (1965) viewed creativity as an aspect of thinking in terms analogous to Mednick. They defined creativity as "an individual's capacity or ability to generate cognitive associations in quality and with uniquenes.s" Wallach and Kogan emphasized that in a creative activity, there is present a playful permissible attitude towards the task which is independent of any temporal pressure.
Parnes ( 1976) took a different stand in that, he identified creativity as "a function of knowledge, imagination and evaluation." He further added that creative behaviour is that, which demonstrates both uniqueness and relevance.
Welsh (1973) was fairly successful in imposing an order where choas prevailed. He emphasized one or more· of the following four aspects in creativity. (i) process in terms of principles (ii) person in terms of personality (iii) press in terms of environment and ( iv) Product in results or outcomes of the creative act.terms of the
However,according to Encyclopedia of Education (1983) "Creativity is a general ability possesed by all essentially healthy individuals to some degree. All people think in terms of different levels of creativity.' Though the definitions presented here reflect a wide ranging diversification in terms of their meaning and orientation, yet, it may be observed that the overall emphasis of all these definitions has undoubtedly been about the development of something 'new.' 'unique' or 'original' with an element of ' surprise' and 'usefulness.' Anyhow the term· 'uniqueness' has not been defined clearly which attracted Koestler (1977) to describe it as the 'junctional clash.'
2.5. Components of Creativity
The methods of investigation applied in studies on creativity have been either descriptive, experimental or statistical.these three Attempts at interpretation are found in all approaches,in the first, in terms of psychological dynamics, in the second, in terms of mental processes and in the third, in terms of factor analysis.
Guilford (1950) and his associates through factor analysis undertook to discover and define the complex of abilities that together make-up creative thinking. They devised tests to explore each of a number of possible components and eventually established seven some what different but related abilities given as follows: ( i)Sensitivity to problem:- This means awareness of defects, needs and deficiencies in the environment. (ii) (a) Associative fluency:- This is the ability to think of words rapidly that meet certain requirements, such as being synonymous or being opposites. (ii) (b) Ideational fluency:- This is the rate at which a person can think of ideas. For example, a person may be asked to think of as many uses as possible of a thing. (iii) (a) Spontaneous flexibility:- This is the ability to strike out in a number of different directions in one's thinking. For example, a person may be asked to think of a variety of as many uses as possible of a thing. (iii) ( b) Adaptive flexibility . - It is the ability to change the direction of one's thinking in order to keep up with a changing problem situation.(iv) Originality . - It is a quality which can be demonstrated in several ways, one being the uncommonness of ideas a person has, another the ability to produce clever 'original' titles for stories and the another being the ability to see unusual consequences of outlandish hypotheses. (v) Redefinition-It is the ability to improvise operations in situations, where a familiar object may be used for unfamiliar functions.(vi) Elaboratinon- It is indicated by a task in which a person is given one or two simple lines and asked to construct on this foundation a more complex object. /
2.6 Processes and Dispositions of Creativity
As has been stated earlier there has been a great deal of controversy regarding the nature of creative processes also.A number of scholars have examined the precise nature of creative processes from different angles. Dewey (1910) found a relationship between literary creativity and synaesthesia ( the ability to experience different modes of imagery at the same time). Pioncar' e (1908) reflects Galton' s (1882) views who suggested the existence of a "presence chamber" and an " antechamber" full of allied ideas beyond consiousness. Spearman (1930) saw as a factor in the creative mind the facility for the "apprehension of experience". Mckellar(1957) devided thinking into R-thinking (reality centred) and A-thinking (based on autism) and emphasized the importance of A-thinking and imagery in the creative work. He also stressed receptivity. Unlike psychometrists, Wallas (1926) suggested a four stage creative process. The first is preparation, the second incubation, then illumination and finally the verification. Werthmier(1945) considered creative thinking as productive thinking. Jackson & Messick (1965) identified four criteria to judge creativity: novelty, appropriateness, transformation and condensation.
Roe (1969) suggested that the crucial factor in creativiyt is behaviour, Mackinnon (1963) pointed out that divergent thinking is not of itself an adequate measure for creativity, what is needed is investigation of biographical data, temperament and mo tivation. De Bono (1970) classified as vertical thinking and lateral thinking. Lateral- thinking is characterised by 4 components, (a) recognition of dominant polarizing ideas. (b) search for different ways of looking at things ( c) relaxation of rigid control of vertical thinking and (d) the use of chance. He suggested that lateral thinking is rela, ted to creative thinking but it is not the same. According to Taylor (1975) the Wallas' four steps are valid, but it is also necessary to recognize hierarchial levels of creativity from lowest to highest. They are ( a) expressive creativity or the development of an unique idea. (b) productive creativity, or proficiency in creating products (c) inventive creativity or the ingenious use of materials to develop new uses (d) innovative creativity or the ability to formulate departure from established norms and (e) emergenative creativity, a rarely attained quality of excellence.
Renzulli ( 1978 ) pointed out that individuals, who have achieved recognition because of their unique accomplishments possess a relatively well defined set of three interlocking clusters of traits.These clusters consists of, above average abilities, task commitment and creativity .It is important to point out that no cluster leads to giftedness, rather it is the interaction among the three clusters that research has shown to be necessary for creative accomplishment. Wellings (1980) argued that we can conveniently consider defensive thinking, and productive thinking as non creative thinking whereas elaborative thinking, adaptive thinking and developmental thinking as creative thinking.
In Guilford's (1950) psychoepistemology, there are atleast 30 varieties of information and five basic operations that may be performed in connection with each of them. In his "structure of Intellect model" the content categories form the source of informations. Under this, four major kinds of information are recognised, they are (i) figural (ii) semantic (iii) symbolic and (iv) behavioural. All the items of information are constructed by the brain and the constructs are the products. The content categories are the codes or languages and the individual products are the words in those languages. With in each one of the content areas of information, there are six kinds of products.The basic construct is a unit, then classes, relations,systems, transformations and implications . All these form the products.Transformation is an unusual kind of product and has a special relation to creative thinking. The kinds of operations performed with information are, cognition memory, divergent production, convergent production and evaluation. Guiford, while discussing the creative process stated that, the determiners of creative production lie both within the individual and his environment. His creative disposition can be described in terms of certain traits of motivation temperament and aptitude or abilities. Other determiners are to be found with in his environment that is provided by his family, his school and his working milieu. Thus, in theory it is possible to conceptualize creative processes as, following a sequential pattern, while the forms of creativit'y can range from fairly mundane to highly sophisticated levels of innovation.
2.7 Intelligence and Creativity: There has been a considerable interest in the study of relationship between creativity and intelligence, particularly the extent to which the latter can account for the former. Accumulating evidence indicates that Intelligence is a multidimentional affair, with many components having been discovered by factor analysis. As per , Guilford's (1956) "structure of Intellect model" there are some forty seven known factors of intellect including the a bilities of fluency, flexibility and originality as well as sensitivity to problems. Here, the traits of fluency, and originality come in the general category of divergent thinking or Creativity. The factor known as sensitivity to problems, however, comes under the convergent thinking category otherwise known as intelligence. It is probably true that other abilities outside the divergent thinking category also make their contributions to productive thinking. We might arbitrarily define creative thinking as divergent thinking, but it is incorrect to say that divergent thinking accounts for all the intellectual components of creative production (Guliford,1959), because it is not unequivocally clear· that divergent thinkers are always intelligent persons). Studies investigating the statistical relation between measures of creativity and intelligence and of the circumstances in which the two traits are more or less independent, also some times make a special reference to the 'threshold' or 'triangular scatter plot' theory advanced by Torrance (1965), which hypothesizes that at some point around an IQ of 120 the achievement of children is likely to be determined more by their creativity than by the amount of IQ which exceeds by 120. This 'threshold' theory is supported by some of the findings of Ogilvie's (1970) investigation of a±vergent thinking in the frame.work of piagetian theory. Since divergent production or creativity factors are relatively independent of cognition factors or intelligence and the intercorrelations between tests of these two categories are also low and since IQ tests emphasize cognition abilities, we should not expect to find much correlation between creativity test scores and IQ (Guilford,1967). The studies by Maduas (1965), who tested the Wallach and Kogan's (1965) hypohesis that, lack of success in distinguishing creativity from intelligence might have been due to the conditions under which the creativity tests had been administered, which show a clear independence between divergent thinking and intelligent indices. Cropley's (1966) finding showed that it is possible to distinguish between convergent and divergent thinking abilities in terms of overlaps. He stated that it is equally irrational to conclude that the two traits are completely independent. Anderson's (1970) convergent-divergent model was the outcome of this conclusion. Sivadasan (1987) has reported that in general, there is no significant relationship between divergent thinking and intellectual abilities. Even before the advent of the intelligence tests, studies reported that some persons of "intellectual" type and "log1ica1 power" type performed poorly on indices of imagination (Getzels and Jackson 1962). Terma n's (1925) study showed that a fourth of the gifted children with IQ of 170 or above had only fair to poor achievement and Hollingworth (1942) reported that some of her children with the highest possible IQ seemed entirely uncreative. Mackinnon (1964) in a study on adults, illustrated that the correlation between creativity and intelligence was -0.08. However in a recent review of the work, Barron and Harrington (1981) gave +0.3 as a reasonable estima te of the central tendency as far as the correlation betwen these two traits is concerned. The two m ajor controversies regarding the relationship between creativity and intelligence, centres around two standpoints (i) creativity is a distinct aspect of intellectual functioning which, for practical purposes is independent of intelligence (Guilford,1950; Wilson,1954; Getzels & Jackson, 1962; Torrance, 1962 Taylor, 1964 ; Yamamoto, 1961; Wallach and Kogan, 1965; Passi, 1972; Mehdi, 1973; Cropley, 1966). ,Clark et al., (1965), Circirelli (1965) and Robinson (1967) found no relationshipbetween the two aspects. The second stand point that creativity depends upon unique cognitive factors which function within the hierarchial structure of intelligence was proposed by Vernon (1950), Foster (1971), Burt ( 1962), Mc Nemer (1964), Wodtke (1964), Thorndike (1963) and Moss (1966 ).
It may therefore be concluded that the two traits are neither completely independent of each other nor dependent upon each other. Further, we may be in a better position to distinguish between creativity and intelligence if we were to identify individuals who are outstanding in intelligence but not in creativity and also identify individuals who are very high in creativity but not concomitantly high in scholastic achievement.
2.8 Development of Creativity
Like any other mental ability,creativity has its own characteristic developmental trend which has been studied extensively. This trend has been established largely through a cross-sectional approach in which creativity levels of children and adults of different age groups are consistant with slumps at different stages. The developmental curves for most of the abilities thought to be involved in creative thinking follow a pattern which is quite differene from most other aspects of human growth. Torrance (1962), reviewing the results of a number of earlier studies (Ligon, 1957: Lowenfeld and Brittain 1966) on the growth of creativity and from many studies conducted by himself, has described at length the developmental trends for creative abilities. Since no criteria of creative accomplishments for children are available, their creative development has typically been studied through performance on divergent thinking tests.
A child during the first 2 years, develops 51 his imagination, and shows signs of curiosity. From age 2 to 4, child develops a sense of autonomy, indulges in verbal imaginative play, makes 'new' discoveries for himself and explores his capacities and abilities. A typical child from to 6 years has good imagination, though there is also a lessening of imagination.Then, the skills of planning are learnt and the child searches for 'truth' and 'right'. After this, upto 8 years of age the child becomes aware of others' feelings 12 years and his realistic imagination develops. From 8 to the child develops his imagination still further and can use his skills creatively in many areas. The faculty of critical reading gradually develops and a general restlessness is felt by the child. After 12 years"of age, the spirit of adventure begins supreme both in social and emotional fields, non confirmity to adult norms, rules and regulations are also prominent at this stage. This continues till 14 activity years of age after which most of the imaginative seems to be focussed in the future careers.The skills involved in creative problem solving are slowly learnt during this period, though adventure still occupies an important to occur part in life. The slumps in the development seems at the transitory period from one stage to another, which has been explained in terms of the theory of Sullivan (1953). interest However peer acceptance, and unstable nature of and aptitudes may dampen the creativity of 16 years old boys and girls. A 16 to 18 years old youth is full of optimistic aspirations for his life and considers art and social activity as a means to enrich creative activity and solve problems of complex nature. After the age of 18 it is rather difficult to speak of common developmental patterns of creative abilities because of the great diversity in vocations chosen by individuals. Adult creativity tends to mature early and reach its highest point in the 30s and decline slowly afterwords (Lehman,1953), Many explainations have been putforth to corroborate the set-backs in the growth of creative abilities at 4th, 7th and 11th grade levels respectively According to Torrance(1962) these declines may be explained in terms of II reactions to new stresses encountered at each new stage of development, or each transitional state in education." Various reasons have been putforth to explain the decrease in the quality of creative product at later age, which include- lack of recognition distinctive criticism, under valuing, let down in motivation, family responsibilities, commitments and social obligations. -errors and ommisons may kindly be ignored and corrected. Dr. Mohd Iqbal Ahmed