A Research On The Role Of Knowledge Base And Cognitive Evaluation In Creative Ideation

The exploration of cognitive mechanism underlying creative generation is one of the research focuses in creativity study. Recently, various studies based on cognitive approaches have been carried out; of which knowledge base and cognitive evaluation are two of the important aspects. Some researchers take knowledge base and cognitive evaluation as main components in their theories or models of creativity, and some others consider them as two significant influential factors of creativity. Generally speaking, however, there have been more theoretical endeavors than empirical investigations on the role of knowledge base and cognitive evaluation in creative generation.Base on three experiments, the present study intended to explore the role of domain-general knowledge, domain-specific knowledge and cognitive evaluation in creative ideation.Putting it more specifically, three experiments were done in the present study, namely, the role of English vocabulary in creativity of English writing based on a picture; the role of psychological knowledge base in creativity of psychological research designs; and the role of varied cognitive evaluation in toy designs.It was concluded that:a) When vocabulary is small, increment of English vocabulary can result in increment of English writing creativity; When vocabulary is large enough, increment of English vocabulary will not necessarily result in increment of English writing creativity.b) The influence of English vocabulary on the novelty of English writing is larger than that on the appropriateness of English writing; English vocabulary can in some way predict the creativity of English writing.c) Both the level of domain-general knowledge and domain-specific knowledge are positively related to creativity.d) There is interaction between the influences of knowledge base and task difficulty on creativity; compared with low difficulty task, when under the condition of high difficulty task, domain-specific knowledge has greater influence on creativity.e) No matter whether the individual is asked to evaluate, he/she will evaluate the product in various times of the creative processes in his/her own way.