General and specific-domain contributions to creativity
From this article in Europe’s Journal of Psychology (2016).
“The general objective of this study was to reexamine two views of creativity, one positing that there is a general creative capacity or talent and the other that creativity is domain-specific. […] Multiple regressions uncovered particular relationships consistent with the view that creativity has both general and domain-specific contributions. Limitations, such as the focus on one domain, and future directions are discussed.”
Also see comments.
Article in Frontiers in Psychology (2020). Excerpt of the abstract:
“Implicit theories have been widely studied in different domains; however, it is still debatable whether these theories are domain-specific or domain-general. […] Overall, our results suggest that implicit theories are both domain-specific and domain-general. Future studies are needed to examine the mechanism underlying the domain specificity and generality of implicit theories.”
This article in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (2013) relates to our last discussion about tool use and the human brain. “Tool use, innovativeness and cultural transmission might be linked over our past and in our brains as operations of domain-general intelligence. ” Also see the section on tool use and domain-general and specific intelligence. E.g.: “For many years, the dominant view in evolutionary psychology has been that cognition is best understood as a mental tool kit that includes several independent modules, each specialized for a particular purpose. […] This cannot be the case for innovation, which constantly deals with new… Read more »
FYI, I argued for domain-specific intelligence in developmental psychology here. I’m trying now to investigate the possibility for domain-general intelligence.
Also recall this thread with a link to New Scientist articles on intelligence. For example, from the first article: “When researchers talk about intelligence, they are referring to a specific set of skills that includes the abilities to reason, learn, plan and solve problems. The interesting thing is that people who are good at one of them tend to be good at all of them. These skills seem to reflect a broad mental capability, which has been dubbed general intelligence or g. This seems to fly in the face of old ideas. In the early 1980s, Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner… Read more »
Also recall our book discussion of Range, which argued for domain general critical thinking. Here is a quick Epstein Ted Talk to remind us of his major thesis.
Paul and I have been having a related email discussion that I copy and past below: Me: The author said EP doesn’t take account of the latest neuroscience in brain connections (connectome). Is that even true? Also he generalizes that EP only accepts the module approach, that certain brain areas have specific functions via natural selection. I recall you saying something to the effect that as a result there are no generalized brain areas? Paul: Good point, Ed. But, if they come up with anything I think EP’s should hear, I recommend acceptance. But, maybe not with utmost enthusiasm. That… Read more »
Paul, you said: “But, as soon as programmed or environmentally-triggered change is called for, sophisticated and fairly generalized suites of mechanisms to allow neuroplasticity, circuit revision, including the design of the connectome, are activated in the relevant brain regions.”
Please expand on this.
Here is the abstract from another article in Frontiers in Psychology: “In the field of numerical cognition it is often highlighted that the domain-specific systems, referred to as “Approximate Number System” (ANS), or “The Number Sense” (NS)1, constitute the basis for mathematical skills (Feigenson et al., 2004; Dehaene, 2011). However, recently, Leibovich et al. (2016) stressed the role of domain-general factors, especially cognitive control, in the formation of elementary numerical abilities. Here we would like to show that these domain-general processes are not only crucial for the formation of number concepts, but in our view, appear to be integral to… Read more »
Article in Frontiers in Neuroscience excerpt:
“We found that gray matter (GM) density in the left dorsal AIC correlates with empathy and that this area overlaps with the domain general region (DGR) of the anterior insula that is situated in-between functional systems involved in emotion.”
This from Brain: A Journal of Neurology:
“We hypothesized that the recovery of speech production after left hemisphere stroke not only depends on the integrity of language-specialized brain systems, but also on ‘domain-general’ brain systems that have much broader functional roles. The presupplementary motor area/dorsal anterior cingulate forms part of the cingular-opercular network, which has a broad role in cognition and learning.”
Article in Trends in Cognitive Sciences:
“A decade of converging evidence has now illuminated a fundamental distinction between two subregions of Broca’s area that likely play computationally distinct roles in cognition: one belongs to the domain-specific ‘language network’, the other to the domain-general ‘multiple-demand (MD) network’. Claims about Broca’s area should be (re)cast in terms of these (and other, as yet undetermined) functional components, to establish a cumulative research enterprise where empirical findings can be replicated and theoretical proposals can be meaningfully compared and falsified. “
Article in Cerebral Cortex (2020):
“Numerous brain imaging studies identified a domain-general or ‘multiple-demand’ (MD) activation pattern accompanying many tasks and may play a core role in cognitive control. […] The conjunction of three cognitive contrasts reveals a core of 10 widely distributed MD parcels per hemisphere that are most strongly activated and functionally interconnected, surrounded by a penumbra of 17 additional areas. […] We suggest MD regions are well positioned to integrate and assemble the diverse components of cognitive operations.”
And then there is Chang’s 2008 Ph.D. dissertation at the International Computer Science Institute at UC Berkeley, which investigates the neural theory of language (referenced before by Lakoff). It notes the following on language acquisition: “All theories assume the child brings some initial knowledge that guides learning, and that many domain-general skills are present pre-linguistically” (24). “The universals assumed here as prior knowledge are primarily domain-general, though a domain-specific predisposition to attend to certain relations between forms, and more generally to relationships between form and meaning, is also included. […] The learning strategy exploits mostly domain-general procedures, though the specific… Read more »
Article in Frontiers in Psychology (2014). Abstract excerpt that later research noted in the other comments verified:
“What role does domain-general cognitive control play in understanding linguistic input? […] I argue that we should stop asking whether domain-general cognitive control mechanisms play a role in language comprehension, and instead focus on characterizing the division of labor between the cognitive control brain regions and the more functionally specialized language regions.”
Article in Journal of Neuropsychology (2020). From the abstract:
“Substantial evidence has suggested that reading and math are supported by executive processes (EP). […] With careful task designs and conjunction analyses, we were able to isolate cross‐domain brain activity specifically related to EP. […] Results […] yielded overlapping activation for reading, math, and EP in the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, left inferior frontal junction, and left precentral gyrus. This pattern suggests that posterior regions of the prefrontal cortex, rather than more central regions such as mid‐DLPFC, play a leading role in supporting domain‐general EP utilized by both reading and math.”
Article by Jean Mandler (2012), cognitive scientist at UCSD:
“A theory of how concept formation begins is presented that accounts for conceptual activity in the first year of life, shows how increasing conceptual complexity comes about, and predicts the order in which new types of information accrue to the conceptual system. In a compromise between nativist and empiricist views, it offers a single domain-general mechanism that redescribes attended spatio-temporal information into an iconic form. “
[…] up on this cogsci article, this new article in Nautilus supports the previous work about how spatial motor […]