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Cognitive mechanisms underlying the creative process

Gabora, Liane (2002) Cognitive mechanisms underlying the creative process. [Conference Paper]

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Abstract

This paper proposes an explanation of the cognitive change that occurs as the creative process proceeds. During the initial, intuitive phase, each thought activates, and potentially retrieves information from, a large region containing many memory locations. Because of the distributed, content-addressable structure of memory, the diverse contents of these many locations merge to generate the next thought. Novel associations often result. As one focuses on an idea, the region searched and retrieved from narrows, such that the next thought is the product of fewer memory locations. This enables a shift from association-based to causation-based thinking, which facilitates the fine-tuning and manifestation of the creative work.

Item Type:Conference Paper
Keywords:Associative hierarchy, bisociation, brainstorm, concepts, conjunction, context, creativity, defocused attention, distributed representation, emergent features, evaluation, focus, generativity, idea, impossibilist creativity, intuition, variable focus.
Subjects:Psychology > Cognitive Psychology
Computer Science > Neural Nets
Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence
Neuroscience > Behavioral Neuroscience
ID Code:2546
Deposited By: Gabora, Dr. Liane
Deposited On:22 Oct 2002
Last Modified:11 Mar 2011 08:55

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