Abstract:

Currently, divergent thinking task, remote association task and insight task have been widely used in evaluating one’s creativity ability and the neural mechanism of creativity. However, these tools are non-scientific problem-solving tasks, the ecological validity and predictive validity are limited. Based on the previous studies, this project aims at investigating the creativity construct and mechanism of prototype heuristic with real scientific innovation problem. In the first study, two behavior experiments were adopted to explore the creativity components of prototype heuristics in scientific innovation problem solving. The second study examined the construct validity of these creativity components with the functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging data. In the third study, three fMRI experiments were adopted to explore the brain mechanism of creativity components of prototype heuristics when participants tried to solve scientific innovation problem. The last study tested the predictive validity of these creativity component tests with tracking study in colleges and companies. The ultimate goal of this project was developing new creative thinking tests which have desirable predictive validity and ecological validity.

Key words: scientific innovation, problem solving, creativity, prototype heuristic, neural mechanism