Cognitive Underpinnings of Creative Thinking

50,000 years ago humans shared the land with other hominins like the Neanderthals and the Denisovans. But somehow, over the course of the next 30,000 years, every other hominin species went extinct while the modern day humans saw huge growth and advancement.

Some people point to the development of language and tools that gave us a Darwinian edge. But evidence of language and tools, some of which were fairly sophisticated, have been found in Neanderthals and the other hominins. So what made us special?

According to Thomas Suddendorf, professor and author, what set us apart was not language or tools, rudimentary forms of which exist in other animals, but our ability to do open-ended imagination and make connections between different concepts. This enabled us to do mental “time travel”, going back in time and in the future, and allowed us to foresee and plan for our survival. In addition, making connections allowed us to find novel and interesting solutions to problems that we faced.

From a cognitive perspective, our brain allows us to voluntarily think of a concept which then triggers another concept, which in turn triggers the next one and so on, leading to a stream of thought, something that likely doesn’t exist in other animals. As Professor Liane Gabora explains, “With this ‘self-triggered recall and rehearsal loop’ we could now activate and re-activate visions and dreams, such that with each successive conception of them they were looked at from a different angle, embedded a little more firmly in the constraints of reality as we know it, and potentially turned into a form in which they could be realized.

This cognitive ability is the direct result of how our brain stores information associatively, and is the reason why humans are able to come up with novel and creative ideas.

Think about how a computer stores information. To store the word “apple” in computer memory, each word is broken down to its letters and each letter in turn is converted to its binary code and stored. For example, the binary code for “a” is “01100001”, for “p” is “01110000” and so on. That’s not how human brains store information.

Human brains store each concept as a whole, connected to other concepts. So the word “apple” is stored as a concept by itself and is linked to other concepts with different kinds of links. So “apple” might be connected to “fruit” by a thing to category link, to “red” by a thing to property link, or “rash” by a cause and effect link if someone is allergic to apples. These links have different strengths in the brain so the dominant link for one person might be apple to red, but apple to fruit for someone else.

When you consciously think of an idea, your brain automatically activates some of the connecting ideas and brings them into your consciousness, leading to a stream of thought.

This also explains why it is sometimes hard to think of new ideas or solutions. As we think about a problem, some of these links get reinforced and strengthened making it hard to change perspective or think in a different direction. In other words, “These same pathways, however, also become the mental ruts that make it difficult to reorganize the information mentally so as to see it from a different perspective.

The associative nature of the brain also comes into play when it encounters ideas that are not related. To see how this works, look at the two words below:

                          Bananas                            Vomit

If you are like most people, the moment you read the two words, your brain automatically tried to connect the unrelated words with a causal connection, forming a scenario where eating bananas led to vomiting, leaving you with a somewhat unpleasant feeling. 

You didn’t have to consciously think of this, your brain did the work of finding the best possible connection between the two words.

These two aspects of the associative nature of our brain – activating connected ideas and finding connections between random ideas – are what make it possible for us to think creatively. In fact, most creative thinking techniques rely on these two underlying mechanisms in one form or the other to generate novel ideas.

  1. Traversing Connected Ideas: Techniques like “Slice and Dice” and “Cherry Split” in Thinkertoys or segmentation in TRIZ, work by forcing the brain to traverse different paths in the associative network by explicitly listing out the triggers.
  2. Adding a Random Component: By simply introducing a random element into the mix, the brain automatically tries to find the best way to incorporate the random element into the solution. Techniques like the “Brute Think” and “Hall of Fame” in Thinkertoys are an example of such an approach.

What made us come so far is likely because of our unique cognitive strengths – how we store and process information in our brains, combine different ideas and run mental simulations. These strengths allowed us to solve problems, make inventions and build on each others ideas, and they just might turn out to be key for our future as well. 

A Summer Full of Inventions

After an exciting and busy spell, we recently concluded our summer programs that introduced children to creativity and inventing.

This year, we expanded on our summer camp from last year. We ran our invention themed camps for two age groups – a younger group (1st – 4th grade) and an older group (5th – 8th). The younger group had weekly invention themes (like inventions to simplify chores, making functional clothes etc). For the older group, we did a 2-week camp in collaboration with the Archimedes School (who taught 3D printing). The students made pressure sensors from individual components, 3D printed a casing for their sensors and then used creative thinking techniques to come up with new inventions that would use pressure sensors in a meaningful way.

Our goal was for children to experience the entire creative flow from ideation to prototyping, and learn creativity skills that would last them for longer. Through these creativity techniques, we wanted children to come up with many different ideas to solve a problem. In fact, with the older group, we even tallied how many ideas they got with and without using creativity techniques. Everyone in that group was able to come up with 2x-3x more ideas by using one of the creative thinking approaches! Here are the things we focused on in our camps:

  • Understanding Creativity: We started each camp with discussing what creativity means – that it involves coming up with ideas that are both original and useful.  Creativity is often confused with art, and it was helpful to clarify that in the beginning with a discussion of what makes something creative.
  • Creativity Techniques: For both groups, we focused on two core creative thinking techniques to coming up with original ideas – “Put to Another Use” and “Associative Thinking“. Being able to adapt an object for a different use and finding ways to combine a random object or concept, are fundamental processes in thinking creatively and seem to underlie other creativity techniques. The older group also did other techniques like reversing assumptions, and processes like MindMapping to help them brainstorm more effectively.
  • Evaluating Creativity: While it’s important to understand what creativity is, we thought it would be even better if the students knew how they can measure creativity. So, everyone had to evaluate their own as well as others’ ideas on “originality” and “usefulness”. The older group also rated ideas on “impact” and “practicality”. This exercise really helped them in picking the most creative ones to pursue in a systematic way.
  • Telling a Story: It’s not enough to come up with a good idea – selling an idea is just as important. So we introduced storytelling and storyboarding concepts to help them tell a compelling story about their invention. The older group pitched their idea to the rest of the group and got useful feedback on their invention and pitch in return.  

We were truly heartened to see even the younger children apply these concepts and come up with creative ideas. And we ended up with some very neat inventions in the process!

The younger group came up with ideas like a sweater that converts into a hammock using drawstrings on the collar and bottom (notice the “Put to another use” skill being used here?), a pot with removable handles that also serve as spatulas, a couch with easy access storage bins and many more!

The older group used pressure sensor in many different ways and after searching through the patent database picked ideas that they believed were sufficiently unique and useful. We had a safe stovetop that will switch off when there is no pan on it, a laundry hamper that reminds you to do your laundry regularly, a pencil grip that detects when you are under stress and pressing too hard and several more. And what truly warmed our hearts was when one of the students commented during the demo day, “If all of these were not just prototypes, the world would be so much better!

We had a great time watching  our 40+ campers learn to play with ideas and hope they are inspired to continue their inventive journey beyond our summer camp.