Can People Creative in Imagery Interpret Ambiguous Figures Faster than People Less Creative in Imagery?

Abstract

The purpose of the research study was to investigate whether people creative in imagery are better than people non‐creative in imagery at interpreting ambiguous figures. Creativity, in the imagery paradigm, is said to involve two processes: combinational play and discovery. Discovery plays a major role in creativity as it is the process of discerning, judging or interpreting the value of a mental construction. Furthermore, creative people have been said to be insightful thus supporting the proposition advanced here that people creative in imagery are faster at interpreting and finding alternative interpretations for ambiguous figures than people less creative in imagery. This study reports both latencies and discoveries in perception and mental imagery as measured on a figure combination task. The data support the conclusion that people creative in imagery are more capable in reinterpreting ambiguous figures and that they are quicker in their discoveries than people less creative in imagery. The analysis to the questions of how the subjects arrived at their discoveries may also illustrate the Gestalt literature on insight as a rapid pattern recognition.

Creativity and ease of ambiguous figural reversal

“…<Insert Table 2 about here.> The results of Study 2 strongly indicate that production of unusual uses for familiar objects is linked to ease of figural reversal. The results are consistent with Riquelme's (2002) observation that production of unusual figures from component shapes was related to figural reversal ability.…”

“…The null results arose from studies with small Ns and so may be due to low statistical power. Riquelme (2002) found a significant relationship between performance on a visuo-spatial creative synthesis task (Finke & Slayton, 1988) and ease of detecting ambiguous figure reversals.…”

The Facilitative Effects of Ambiguous Figures on Creative Solution

“…Results indicated that frequency of successfully check had a positive linear relationship with alternate uses task performance. In addition, there were also studies reporting that successful recognition of reversed ambiguous figures was associated with divergent thinking (Riquelme, ; Klintman, ; Wiseman et al., ). Moreover, Stoycheva (, ) suggested that ambiguity tolerance, the capacity to resist stereotypical reactions or premature solutions in complex, unusual, or novel situations, could cultivate an inquiring, persistent, and courageous creative attitude.…”

Disambiguation of ambiguous figures in the brain

“…Disambiguation is the ability to interpret ambiguous information in a sensible way, and it is considered one of the fundamental components of the creativity process (Riquelme, 2002; Wiseman et al, 2011). This is true in terms of art appreciation and when creating works of art (Zeki, 2008).…”