Embodied Metaphors and Creative “Acts”

Creativity is a highly sought after skill. To inspire people’s creativity, prescriptive advice in the form of metaphors abound: We are encouraged to think outside the box, to consider the problem on one hand, then on the other hand, and to put two and two together to achieve creative breakthroughs. These metaphors suggest a connection between concrete bodily experiences and creative cognition. Inspired by recent advances on body-mind linkages under the emerging vernacular of embodied cognition, we explored for the first time whether enacting metaphors for creativity enhances creative problem-solving. In five studies, findings revealed that both physically and psychologically embodying creative metaphors promote fluency, flexibility, and/or originality in problem-solving. Going beyond prior research that focused primarily on the kind of embodiment that primes preexisting knowledge, we provide the first evidence that embodiment can also activate cognitive processes conducive for generating previously unknown ideas and connections

Metaphors of a conflicted self in the journals of Sylvia Plath

This paper presents some of the results of a study that aims to investigate how mental states can be conveyed linguistically in texts of a personal nature. Figurative language, in particular metaphor and metonymy, are generally understood to play an important role in the expression of such complex phenomena (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999; Kövecses, 2000; Meier and Robinson, 2005). The study therefore looks at the metaphors used to convey mental states in the Smith Journal of ‘The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath’. Mental state here refers to various aspects of cognitive functioning, but the focus, in particular, is on mental states of affect i.e. those mental states that are intrinsically valenced (Ortony and Turner, 1990). Sylvia Plath’s journal provides particularly rich data due to the writer’s linguistic creativity and documented mental health issues, the experience of which she continually explores. Specifically then, this paper focuses on metaphors of motion (or lack thereof) and so called split self metaphors. Both manual intensive analysis and automated corpus methodologies are employed in the investigation: the Wmatrix corpus tool (Rayson, 2009) is used to identify semantic fields that are potential source and target domains in order to obtain a comprehensive picture of metaphor use. In depth analysis is then conducted manually on a sample of journal entries. The MIP procedure (Pragglejaz, 2007) is used for metaphor identification, and interpretations draw on research in other fields, especially psychology, on representations of affect. Metaphors of mental state are analyzed in terms of their implications for conveying a sense of intensity, valency and creativity

Creative User-Centered Visualization Design for Energy Analysts and Modelers

We enhance a user-centered design process with techniques that deliberately promote creativity to identify opportunities for the visualization of data generated by a major energy supplier. Visualization prototypes developed in this way prove effective in a situation whereby data sets are largely unknown and requirements open – enabling successful exploration of possibilities for visualization in Smart Home data analysis. The process gives rise to novel designs and design metaphors including data sculpting. It suggests: that the deliberate use of creativity techniques with data stakeholders is likely to contribute to successful, novel and effective solutions; that being explicit about creativity may contribute to designers developing creative solutions; that using creativity techniques early in the design process may result in a creative approach persisting throughout the process. The work constitutes the first systematic visualization design for a data rich source that will be increasingly important to energy suppliers and consumers as Smart Meter technology is widely deployed. It is novel in explicitly employing creativity techniques at the requirements stage of visualization design and development, paving the way for further use and study of creativity methods in visualization design

Expressing metaphorically, writing creatively: Metaphor identification for creativity assessment

Metaphor, which can implicitly express profound meanings and emotions, is a unique writing technique frequently used in human language. In writing, meaningful metaphorical expressions can enhance the literariness and creativity of texts. Therefore, the usage of metaphor is a significant impact factor when assessing the creativity and literariness of writing. However, little to no automatic writing assessment system considers metaphorical expressions when giving the score of creativity. For improving the accuracy of automatic writing assessment, this paper proposes a novel creativity assessment model that imports a token-level metaphor identification method to extract metaphors as the indicators for creativity scoring. The experimental results show that our model can accurately assess the creativity of different texts with precise metaphor identification. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to apply automatic metaphor identification to assess writing creativity. Moreover, identifying features (e.g., metaphors) that influence writing creativity using computational approaches can offer fair and reliable assessment methods for educational settings

Navigating Metaphorical Expressions through Design Problem Solving: A Perspective of Design Critic in a Creative Economy

In the school of creativity, Metaphors are tools and weapons that designers employs during intellectual navigation to understand unfamiliar design problems and are as useful as criticism to an art-teacher in portfolio grading, assessment and examination. A connecting thread is found by juxtaposing metaphor and criticism in which a creative end is reached for both the Art-teachers and students in academe and practice. Thus in a developing economy where design endeavor gains nobility, a creative product emerges and retrieving concepts from metaphors necessitates creative thinking. While the importance of these creative tools has been acknowledged in design, more research work is needed to appreciate its contribution to design practice. This investigation is aimed at building a connecting thread resilient enough to create a synergy between the uses of metaphor in design criticism and meaningful design problem solving with a particular focus on design creativity. Overt meaning of metaphorical expressions, factors of creativity and constructive criticism were interpolated into a holistic value. Critical evaluation showed that the connection of metaphor and criticism is the most significant factor characterizing design evolution and creativity. On the other hand, the synthesis of design solutions is the stronger factor of the use of metaphors. Evaluation in this paper demonstrates that correct use of metaphorical expressions play an important role in design creativity. Theoretical discourse analysis of metaphorical expressions in design problems was the screen that showed unique contributions of criticism to individual potential discoveries and general creativity by design problem solving in a dynamic econom

Making creative metaphors: The importance of fluid intelligence for creative thought.

The relationship between intelligence and creativity remains controversial. The present research explored this issue by studying the role of fluid intelligence (Gf) in the generation of creative metaphors. Participants (n = 132 young adults) completed six nonverbal tests of Gf (primarily tests of inductive reasoning) and were then asked to create metaphors that described a past emotional experience. The metaphors were rated for creative quality. Latent variable models found that Gf explained approximately 24% of the variance in metaphor quality (standardized beta = .49), consistent with the view that creative ideation engages executive processes and abilities. The effect of Gf remained substantial after including personality (the Big Five factors) in the model. The discussion considers implications for the debate over intelligence and creativity as well as for the cognitive abilities involved in metaphor production

Teachers as designers of GBL scenarios: Fostering creativity in the educational settings

This paper presents a research started in 2010 with the aim of fostering the creativity of teachers through the design of Game-Based Learning scenarios. The research has been carried out involving teachers and trainers in the co-design and implementation of digital games as educational resources. Based on the results grained from the research, this paper highlights successful factors of GBL, as well as constraints and boundaries that the introduction of innovative teaching and learning practices faces within educational settings

The creative potential of metaphorical writing in the literacy classroom

Creativity is difficult to define and a universal definition remains elusive. However, common words associated with creativity affirm that it concerns novelty and originality, hallmarks of many great and enduring texts. Students can also be encouraged to surface original ideas through constructing their own creative texts. This article outlines such a project that focuses on metaphorical writing with students in the primary school setting. When teachers foster creativity in the literacy classroom, they provide openended lessons, encourage variety and innovation, and allow time to play with ideas. Engaging students in writing their own metaphorical texts is one way in which students can generate novel responses and multiple interpretations as outlined in this paper. The students’ texts reveal unique voices that range from the playful to the dramatic in their creative exploration of what it means to be human. The potential of such writing for engaging students is discussed alongside the value of metaphorical writing for encouraging emotional exploration, imagination and sheer enjoyment

Metáforas y modelos en ciencia y filosofía

The use of metaphors and other tropes in science receives nowadays growing attention among the philosophers of science, mainly when related to theoretical models. In this paper I analyse basically issues like the cognitive value of scientific metaphors, the role played by analogy in the constructions of metaphors, and, mainly, the question of whether theoretical models are metaphors. Throughout the analysis of different current approaches to the relationships between metaphors and models in science, I claim that the analogy only plays a fundamental role in the metaphorical proposals in science after analogue theoretical models are at our disposal. This nonetheless does not preclude for the analogy to become sometimes a guide in scientific creativity