Enhancing creativity by training metacognitive skills in mental imagery

In a three-year longitudinal study, 240 undergraduate dance students were recruited to assess the effectiveness of a series of workshops designed to develop metacognitive skills in use of mental imagery to support choreographic creativity. The workshops were based upon a theoretical model of mental representations and cognition. The students also completed a creativity test before the workshops, and a newly designed test of flexible thinking before and after the workshops, and a year later. Five forms of the flexible thinking test were created to allow for repeated administration over time, and the forms were shown to be equivalent and to correlate with the creativity test. Students who had taken part in the imagery workshops showed a greater improvement in flexible thinking a year after the training, compared to the scores of students who had not received the training. Evaluations of choreographic assessments by the students’ teachers were rated for positive and negative mentions of imagery and creativity, and the imagery group scored worse than the control group on use of imagery immediately after the training, but better than the control group on creativity and use of imagery four months after the workshop. The findings show that domain-specific creativity can be enhanced through developing skills in the use of mental imagery to produce novel ideas, and that this also improves domain-general flexible thinking.