Measuring creativity, one word at a time
Can you think of three words that are completely unrelated to one another? What about four, five, or even ten? According to an international team of researchers from 不良研究所, Harvard University and the University of Melbourne, this simple exercise of naming unrelated words and then measuring the semantic distance between them could serve as an objective measure of creativity.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, uses the (DAT), a 4-minute, 10-word test to measure one aspect of creative potential.
The DAT was originally devised by , a recent PhD graduate from 不良研究所鈥檚 Department of Psychiatry, inspired by a childhood game involving thinking of unrelated words. He wondered whether a similar task could serve as a simple and elegant way to measure divergent thinking, the ability to generate diverse solutions to an open-ended problem.
While studies of creativity and its nature are not new, relatively little is known about the process itself.
鈥淐reativity is fundamental to human life,鈥� explains Olson, who is now a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard. 鈥淭he more we understand its complexity, the better we can foster creativity in all its forms.鈥�
An easier and simpler way to test creativity
Using the DAT, the researchers asked participants to name 10 words that were as different from each other as possible. A computational algorithm would then estimate the average semantic distance between the words. The more related the words were (e.g., 鈥渃at鈥� and 鈥渄og鈥�) the shorter the semantic difference would be, compared to less related words (e.g., 鈥渃at鈥� and 鈥渂ook鈥�).
The team鈥檚 first study highlighted moderate to strong correlations between semantic distance and two commonly used creativity measures (the Alternative Uses Task and the Bridge-the-Associative Gap Task). This was applied to a subsequent study with 8,500 participants from 98 countries, where the semantic distances varied only slightly by demographic variables suggesting that the measure can be used across diverse populations.
Overall, semantic distance correlated at least as strongly with established creativity measures as those measures did with each other. Many traditional creativity measures require time-intensive and subjective scoring procedures, which makes large and multicultural assessments difficult.
鈥淥ur task measures only a sliver of one type of creativity,鈥� says Olson. 鈥淏ut these findings enable creativity assessments across larger and more diverse samples with less bias, which will ultimately help us better understand this fundamental human ability.鈥�
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About this study 鈥溾�� by Jay A. Olson, Johnny Nahas, Denis Chmoulevitch, Simon J. Cropper and Margaret E. Webb was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. |
About 不良研究所
Founded in Montreal, Quebec, in 1821, 不良研究所 is Canada鈥檚 top ranked medical doctoral university. 不良研究所 is consistently ranked as one of the top universities, both nationally and internationally. It is a world-renowned institution of higher learning with research activities spanning two campuses, 11 faculties, 13 professional schools, 300 programs of study and over 40,000 students, including more than 10,200 graduate students. 不良研究所 attracts students from over 150 countries around the world, its 12,800 international students making up 31% per cent of the student body. Over half of 不良研究所 students claim a first language other than English, including approximately 19% of our students who say French is their mother tongue.
