Within creativity research, interest and capability in utilizing text-mining models to quantify the Originality of participant responses to Divergent Thinking tasks has risen sharply over the last decade, with many extant studies fruitfully using such methods to uncover substantive patterns among creativity-relevant constructs. However, no systematic psychometric investigation of the reliability and validity of human-rated Originality scores, and scores from various freely available text-mining systems, exists in the literature. Here we conduct such an investigation with the Alternate Uses Task. We demonstrate that, despite their inherent subjectivity, human-rated Originality scores displayed the highest reliability at both the composite and latent factor levels. However, the text-mining system GloVe 840B was highly capable of approximating human-rated scores both in its measurement properties and its correlations to various creativity-related criteria including ideational Fluency, Elaboration, Openness, Intellect, and self-reported Creative Activities. We conclude that, in conjunction with other salient indicators of creative potential, text-mining models (and especially the GloVe 840B system) are capable of supporting reliable and valid inferences about Divergent Thinking. We offer an open-access module for researchers to apply these methods to their own data via our laboratory website (https://openscoring.du.edu/).

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Relational reasoning, which has been defined as the ability to discern meaningful patterns within any informational stream, is a foundational cognitive ability associated with education, including in scientific domains. This study entailed the analysis of instructional conversations in which an attending clinical neurologist and his team of residents made diagnostic and therapeutic decisions about actual patients in a hospital setting. The primary goal was to investigate the role of 4 manifestations of relational reasoning (i.e., analogy, anomaly, antinomy, and antithesis) in medical education and diagnostic and therapeutic decision making. Results indicated that the degree to which members of the medical team used the 4 forms of relational reasoning depended on their role and expertise, as well as the time point in the problem-solving process. Specific reasoning patterns that emerged in the discourse and a prototypical model of the reasoning process are described and implications for research and practice are considered.

BackgroundThe originality of divergent thinking (DT) production is one of the most critical indicators of creative potential. It is commonly scored using the statistical infrequency of responses relative to all responses provided in a given sample.AimsResponse frequency estimates vary in terms of measurement precision. This issue has been widely overlooked and is addressed in the current study.Sample and methodSecondary data analysis of 202 participants was performed. A total of 900 uniquely identified responses were generated on three DT tasks and subjected to a 1‐parameter logistic model with a response as the unit of measurement which allowed for the calculation of response‐level conditional reliability (and marginal reliability as an overall summary of measurement precision).ResultsMarginal reliability of response propensity estimates ranged from .62 to .67 across the DT tasks. Unique responses in the sample (the basis for the classic uniqueness scoring) displayed the lowest conditional reliability (across tasks: ≈ .50). Reliability increased nonlinearly as a function of both the frequency of occurrence predicted by the model (conditional reliability) and sample size (conditional and marginal reliability).ConclusionsThis study indicates that the common practice of frequency‐based originality scoring with typical sample sizes (e.g., N = 100 to N = 200) yields unacceptable levels of measurement precision (i.e., in particular for highly original responses). We further offer recommendations to mitigate the lack of measurement precision of frequency‐based originality scores for DT research.

Relational reasoning, the ability to discern meaningful patterns within a stream of information, is considered a critical capacity for students. However, little is known about how this ability is demonstrated by children of different ages in the context of discourse with a more knowledgeable other. Thus, this study sought to investigate the ways in which 4 forms of relational reasoning (i.e., analogy, anomaly, antinomy, and antitheses) manifested in semistructured conversations between a researcher and child about the form and function of more or less familiar objects. Participants were a nationally representative cross-sectional sample of 61 New Zealand primary and secondary students, divided into 3 grade groups: early (Kindergarten through second), middle (fourth through eighth), and late (tenth through eleventh). Results indicated that children as young as 5 years old were capable of using all 4 forms of relational reasoning in discourse. Furthermore, analysis revealed a curvilinear trajectory in the observed versus expected frequencies of relational reasoning among the groups. Finally, in terms of the individual forms of relational reasoning, analogies and anomalies occupied a smaller proportion of relational talk when children were older, whereas antinomies and antitheses occupied a greater proportion. Implications for research and practice are forwarded.