Creativity and cognition work together to process and organize information, with creative thought processes allowing for unique combinations of elements. Creative people tend to have broader filters and perceive things differently, forming unusual associations between ideas. Well-combined creativity and cognition can lead to new inventions and problem-solving approaches.
Creativity and cognition interact to enable an individual to use information in new and different ways. They are related in that creative thought processes allow the thinker to focus on different elements in a situation and combine those features into something unique. Cognition requires the thinker to become aware of the stimulation and then to process and organize what he has noticed. The more individualized and unusual the result, the more creative the person is said to be.
Determining what to focus on is a primary task of cognition. Creative people tend to focus on multiple things and pay attention to their unique or different characteristics. The primary cognitive task is to filter information so that the individual can react appropriately to the situation. A creative person’s filter is often broader, allowing for more information to be processed, and selection criteria for attention are often based on something other than pragmatism. For example, a pragmatist might focus on the ingredients in a restaurant dish, but a creative person might focus on the overall presentation and the effect it has on the patrons.
Research into the processes underlying both creativity and cognition often focuses on perception. Highly creative people seem to perceive things differently, especially in their specific fields. Artists perceive angles and colors that others often miss, and musicians focus on sounds others dismiss. Cognitive testing of creative people suggests that creative brains are wired to focus on unique elements resulting in the individualized perspectives often associated with creativity.
In addition to perceiving ever-changing details, creative people often form unusual associations between things and ideas. The cognitive process behind this lies in the formation of neural association pathways that allow a person to quickly connect thoughts and ideas. Creative brains may have more association or unusually wired pathways than more pragmatic brains. Abstract ideas might be described in terms of colors by an artist, or a writer might be able to think of a dozen different words for a simple idea. As the brain develops, creativity and cognition work together to help the individual form their own ideas about the world and how things work.
Additional information and unique perspectives often result in creative solutions to problems. Cognition is often consumed by problem solving activities. The brain recognizes that a situation needs to be addressed, evaluates the available information, gathers additional information as needed, and synthesizes it into a proposed solution. Thinking creatively about these issues means gathering more or different data and/or linking in unusual ways to existing strategies. Well-combined creativity and cognition often result in new inventions, ideas, or approaches to solving problems.
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