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determinants of creativity. Consequently, there is no clear, unambiguous and widely accepted definition of creativity.

The reasons for this difficulty of definition are not hard to find. Consider, for example, the question of aesthetic enterprises in art, music, sculpture or writ ing. What objective criterion can we use to evaluate the ‘amount’ of creativity which has taken place in a work of art? There is no sense in which we can arrive at a widely accepted judgement of creativeness, since in art, music or writing, one man’s meat is another man’s poison. For this reason, attention tends to have been directed to scientific discovery rather than to artistic creation in the study of creative thinking. Another problem is the confusion arising from our concern to describe the process involved in creative activity from an observation of the products. We assume that parti cular modes of thinking have taken place when certain kinds of response appear.

There is some measure of agreement, that, at its simplest, cognitive creativity (it is hard at this point in our knowledge to include aesthetic creativity as well) results in ideas which are novel, useful and relevant to the solution of problems being examined. ‘Novelty’ is used here in the sense of combining or rearranging es tablished patterns of knowledge in unique fashions; of course, this can happen at many different levels, as when children constantly create new ideas which, for them, are completely original, but which within the culture are quite familiar. Originality at the highest level would have to occur in the much wider context of the world of knowledge. Nevertheless, many studies are based on the assumption that fluency, variety and novelty of ideas contrived by young people, using fa miliar material, signify a potentially creative mind. Perhaps, one important consideration of a novel re sponse, at present impossible to gauge with certainty, is the quality of the process which produced it.

Not all novel responses reflect creative talent. False answers are novel, so are the bizarre statements and ac tions of the mentally ill; but we could hardly classify these as creative in the cognitive sense. Originality, then, is not enough. There must be a measure of relevance to the solu tion of a problem as well. Usefulness is not quite so obvi ous because in science we often find that an original idea has no immediate application and must wait for advances in other fields before it becomes useful.

Assessing creativity

Now it is necessary to give an appraisal of the at tempts made to assess the term ‘creativity’. A concept which is difficult to define is difficult to measure. Consequently, a number of approaches to the study of creativity have developed in this century. Perhaps the three most promising are: (a) studies of the lifestyles of creative people; (b) assessment, using operational definitions, of the products of creative activity; (c) at tempts to discover the processes of creative activity. Of these, the first and the second have been employed with somewhat greater regularity than the last, be cause observing people’s behavior is easier than trying to discover the processes of internal mental behavior.

Creative people: biographical studies

The search for distinguishing characteristics and capacities of creative people has a fairly long history. In the cognitive sphere it is still widely held that cre ative ability is largely a manifestation of the highly in telligent. Thus, in order to find creative people, you would look amongst those with high intelligence.

Other generalizations about the personal qualities of creative men and women depict them as single minded, stubborn, non conformist and persistent in tasks which engage their imaginations. Tolerance to ambiguity is high; they may even enjoy dilemmas and

COMPREHENSION CHECK

Exercise 1. Say whether these statements are true (T) or false (F), and if they are false, say why.

Exercise 2. Be ready to answer questions on creativi ty that you were asked at the beginning of the unit.

Exercise 3. Ask your partner

–why it is difficult to define creativity

–what kinds of ideas creative activity results in

–if novelty is the same for children and adults

–what three most promising approaches to study creativity you can mention

–which two of the three approaches have been employed with greater regularity and why

–what qualities creative people possess

–what the difference between convergent and divergent thinking is

–whether creativity is associated with divergent or convergent thinking

LANGUAGE FOCUS

Exercise 1. Match the English word combinations in the left hand column with the Russian equivalents in the right hand column.

Exercise 2. Match the psychological terms in the left hand column with their definitions in the right hand column. (The definitions are taken from Dictionary of Psychology by J.P. Chaplin, N.Y., 1976)

Exercise 3.

A.Guess the meaning and give the appropri ate translation of the English terminolog ical word combinations.

involvement: ego ~, emotional ~, group ~, organismic ~, social ~, affective ~, motivational ~

creative: ~ work, ~ thinking, ~ personality, ~ abilities, ~ power, ~ frustration

disturbance: acoustic ~, coordination ~, emotional ~, functional ~, motor ~, personality ~, physiological ~, systemic ~, visual ~, consciousness ~, ~ of growth, ~ of mind

evaluation: objective ~, subjective ~, job ~, training ~, anticipatory ~

confusion: laterality ~, mental ~, size age ~ assessment: clinical ~, physiological ~, computer assisted ~,

judgement ~, medical ~, faulty ~, intelligence ~, reliability ~, priority ~, ~ of ability

tolerance: stress ~, error ~, acquired ~, affective ~, ambiguity ~, anxiety ~, frustration ~, human ~, increased ~, mental ~, subjective ~

obsession: impulsive ~, masked ~, somatic ~

B.Convey the meaning of some terms in your own words.

Exercise 4.

A.Fill in the columns with the proper deriv atives of the following words whenever possible.

B.Put a suitable word from the box above into each gap.

1.Due to friendly environment and efficient teaching, he managed to ___ new talents. 2. Only when

the novel idea found its application did it become possible to ___ the full significance of the discovery. 3. Second year psychology students got ___ in working with problem children. 4. Fear to fail has become an

___ with me. 5. I would rely on him. He is so ___ that he is certain to find a way out of the difficulty. 6. I can’t ___ his interference in my affairs. 7. He is trying to achieve his goal so stubbornly, ___and ___ that, undoubtedly, he’ll succeed. 8. Being a man of enterprise he ___ to establish a new laboratory to investigate the phenomenon.

Exercise 5. Arrange the following words into pairs of

(a) antonyms and (b) synonyms.

SPEAKING AND DISCUSSION

Exercise 1. Answer the following questions to the text making use of expressions given in the box below.

From my point of view,…; As I see it…; It would seem to me that…; Personally, I think that…; As far as I can judge…

1.Why do many psychologists often use such terms, as ‘creativity’, ‘inventiveness’, ‘imagination’, ‘ventu resomeness’ and ‘giftedness’ indiscriminately?

2.Why is it difficult to define the term ‘creativity’?

3.Why can’t we say that such characteristics as novelty and originality always reflect creative talent?

4.Why can’t usefulness be always taken into account while evaluating creativity?

5.What are the three most promising approaches to study creativity?

6.What personal qualities and characteristics are common for highly creative people?

7.Why do some psychologists correlate divergent thinking with creative thinking?

Exercise 2. Retell the text using your active vocabu lary.

Exercise 3.

Task 1. Work in pairs and discuss with your partner

–why there is growing interest in the problem of creativeness

–in what spheres of life creative people are in great demand

–whether school encourages or discourages creative thinking and how

Task 2. Scan the text below and

–find there three factors that, according to D.Child, ‘have contributed to the increase in enthusiasm for research in creative thinking’

–give an appropriate title to the text

TEXT

There can be few students who have not encountered the concept of creative thinking in one form or another, or failed to detect the upsurge of interest in recent years. At a national level, we are told that advanced industrial societies cannot survive, develop and compete without the continued emergence of creative people in ever in creasing numbers in political, social and scientific pur suits. This has prompted many governments to sponsor research dedicated to the task of identifying, measur ing, cultivating and exploiting creative talent.

For psychologists, there are at least three factors which have contributed to the increase in enthusiasm for research in creative thinking. One is that conventional tests of intelligence have not convincingly demonstrated that they can distinguish the potentially creative from the not so creative. When you look at a class of bright boys and girls with high measures of intelligence it is virtually impossible to pick out those who will go on to be creative people from those who will not. Thus, while it remains true that creative individuals are amongst those with high intelligence, the relationship between creative capacity and IQ is not so straightforward.

The second reason for the upsurge in enthusiasm in creative thinking is the knowledge explosion which has tended to render conventional modes of learning and teach ing of limited efficiency. The teaching of science, especially in preparation for examinable subjects, has frequently taken the form of ‘here are the facts; now use them.’ This is not to deny the central importance of fact assimilation