Interactive processes between mental and external operations in creative activity: a comparison of experts' and novices' performance

Prior studies of creativity, in the field of cognitive psychology, have mainly dealt with only the process of mentally thinking of ideas. We investigated, through a cognitive psychological experiment and its protocol analysis, experts' and novices' interactive process between the mental operation by which participants considered their ideas and the external operations by which they actually produced physical objects in creative activity. In our experiment, the participants were required to build a creative robot with LEGO Mindstorms. The experimental results showed that the experts could create work that fulfilled both high originality and practicality simultaneously. Moreover, the following four points were confirmed as characteristics of the experts' creative process: (1) the experts globally considered their initial ideas, (2) the experts reconstructed their ideas by considering comprehensively the relationship among the elements constructing their plans, (3) the experts reconstructed their ideas more actively, and (4) the experts were able to embody successfully their ideas by focusing on various aspects of important viewpoints.