Creativity Theory

Understanding creativity is essential to understanding how biological decline of the brain impacts creativity as a cognitive ability. So how exactly does creativity work? Creativity is very abstract and it cannot be assessed physically, therefore psychologists have come up with models of how creativity works. One example is the creative cognition approach, which includes the Geneplore model of creative functioning (Finke et al., 1992). The main proposal was that many creative activities can be described as the first generation of ideas followed by an exploration of those ideas. These ideas are sometimes described as “pre-inventive” in the sense that they are either incomplete plans for some new product, tested solutions to difficult problems,

The Geneplore model assumes that in most cases, a person would according to the needs and restrictions of a particular task, switch between two different processes. The model also differentiates between cognitive processes that are used in creative cognition and the types of mental structures on which they function. For example, Fink et al. (1992) proposed that pre-inventive structures play a large role in exploring and discovering creativity. The pre-inventive structures can be thought of as the base to the final product of something creative. These structures, depending on the task, can be complicated and conceptually focused, or simple and ambiguous. The model also assumes that constraints on the final product can be initiated on the different phases anytime, thereby allowing the model to be used in many different situations. One of the most common creative uses of concepts is to use them when developing new ideas, referred to as conceptual expansion by Ward et al. (1997).

An example of such a theory is the Wear and Tear aging theory in which many people believe that aging is just the result of life processes such as oxidation or other molecular damage that results in a gradual decline in the body including the brain. Aging could also be the result of a buildup of toxins in the body or due to other slow deteriorative processes. Basically, this theory is reasonable because the effects of aging are similar the depreciation of certain objects. However, there are few scientists that believe in the wear and tear theories as they are not able to explain the differences in lifespans between biochemically similar species. The lifespans of similar organisms are different even though aging is supposedly the result of something natural and unstoppable that happens to affect all organisms and they also fail to explain other observations that do not consider the fact that living organisms have damage repair mechanisms. If we continue further research, there are more modern evolutionary aging theories that are followed by most medical researchers. There are two categories of these modern theories: the Modern Non-Programmed and Programmed Aging Theories. Non-programmed theories state that aging occurs because the body does not do a good job of