Are you a keen quizzer? We’re looking for participants in a survey exploring the motivations and expertise development of those who take part in quizzing at any level. Could you help? Link is here: Quiz survey
Calling all keen quizzers!
Reply
Category Archives: Performance research
The State of the Creative Art: What’s new in creativity research?
Philip Fine tells us about a new collection of articles looking at novel ways of researching creativity.
What is creativity? Why are some people more creative than others? What do we know about the creative process? How do people decide whether one product is more creative than another?
Research has attempted to answer questions like these for decades, and made great progress in doing so. We can observe creativity in all domains of human thought, behaviour and experience, for instance creative cognition (insight, divergent thinking and creative problem-solving) and artistic performance (music, dance, art, design).
Many disciplines investigate creativity, including psychology, neuroscience, performance science, education, linguistics and philosophy. But we can ask: what’s new in the world of creativity research? What novel methods and approaches have been developed over the last few years?
To answer this question, Dr Philip Fine and Dr Kathryn Friedlander of our very own CREATE hub, together with Dr Amory Danek, Dr Ian Hocking and Professor Bill Thompson, have been co-editing a special issue of the open-access journal Frontiers in Psychology, entitled: Novel Approaches for Studying Creativity in Problem-Solving and Artistic Performance. It contains 27 articles showcasing the ‘state of the art’ in creativity research, and our recently published over-arching Editorial.
Over the next few months, we will be publishing a number of blog articles discussing some of the contents of these 27 articles. For the moment, please have a look at our conference poster which was presented at the ESCoP conference in September. For more information, do go and read our Editorial, which will give you a flavour of the special issue.
Dr. Philip Fine is Senior Lecturer in Psychology and co-director of the CREATE Research Hub at the University of Buckingham.
Image: Shutterstock 225930193, under licence.
New MSc by Research – Psychology of Creativity and Performance Expertise
Featured
We’re excited to announce that we are offering a new MSc by Research in the Psychology of Creativity and Performance Expertise, here at the University of Buckingham, with entry dates in September and January each year. This MSc is ideal for those with a first degree in Psychology who wish to take their knowledge further in this exciting field. Students can be full- or part-time.
Solving the Puzzle of Expertise Research
Kathryn Friedlander takes a look at an alternative way of studying expertise, the Grounded Expertise Components Approach, suggesting that this might address some pitfalls of previous research.
We’ve all seen the long-running arguments over ‘expertise’ … Are the world’s greatest performers endowed at birth with a lucky genetic advantage? Or are they trained to excel through 10,000 hours of gruelling practice? Or perhaps a blend of both?
Continue readingAre cryptic crosswords really ‘better than sex’?
Kathryn Friedlander explores the ‘kick’ we get from cracking a really good cryptic crossword clue.
A number of stories in the press earlier this year reported work carried out in Vienna and London on solving puzzles in a brain scanner. The study suggested that solving a clue to a puzzle can trigger a highly rewarding ‘Aha!’ (or ‘Eureka!’) insight moment, which releases dopamine into the brain. This is the reward chemical associated with daily activities such as eating, winning money … and having sex. This led to headlines promising that cryptic crosswords were ‘better than sex’… but what’s the reality behind the hype?
Why are psychologists playing games?
Gill Hill explains why investigating creative problem solving is sometimes – quite literally – child’s play.
People might be surprised to hear that the games they played as children can help scientists to explain how people think. For example, researchers have recently used rock, paper scissors as a model for decision making. Furthermore, chess is seen as a pursuit for ‘thinkers’ around the world, and we have consequently seen lots of research exploring psychological processes whilst people play.
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?
