Creativity ‘special issue’ – call for participation!

Novel Approaches for Studying Creativity in Problem-Solving and Artistic Performance – a Frontiers in Psychology Research Topic, coming out in March 2018

Kathryn Friedlander invites creativity researchers world-wide to contribute to an exciting Frontiers in Psychology Research Topic, which went live last week.


Shouldn’t research into ‘creativity’ be pretty creative itself?

Philip Fine and I certainly think so, which is why we’ve been working with Frontiers in Psychology over the past few months to launch a new Research Topic looking at Novel Approaches for Studying Creativity in Problem-Solving and Artistic Performance. The topic went live last week, and together with our other co-editors Roger Kneebone, Ian Hocking, Amory Danek and Bill Thompson we are busy advertising this opportunity as widely as possible, to connect with potential contributors. Do you fit the bill?

Continue reading

Book Review: ‘The Joy of Quiz’ by Alan Connor

Kathryn Friedlander reviews ‘The Joy of Quiz‘ and explores its relevance to the study of expert performance, puzzle solving and niche hobbies.


Joy of Quiz‘Here’s a question: ‘Why do we spend our childhood in fear of exams, then quite willingly put ourselves through pretty much the same tests as adults?’ … The short answer is: fun. The joy of quiz is in making a gratifying game out of all that knowledge sploshing around in our heads – fascinating information, but information for which our jobs and our personal lives stubbornly refuse to find any use’.

So begins this engaging romp through the world of quizzing: an engrossing compendium of trivia and analysis drawn from social history, psychology and real-life ‘behind-the-scenes’ knowledge, based on Alan Connor‘s own experiences as a quiz editor for the BBC2 quiz Only Connect.

Continue reading