Creativity even in non-scientific areas is crucial to planetary survival.

The study of imagery and creativity is of special importance. Many of the problems faced by mankind [humankind] involve the use of creative thinking. In this section I review one representative study indicating the strong links that exist between imagery vividness and creativity. Kobnithikulwong (2007) at the University of Florida, presented her masters thesis on “Creativity and Imagery in Interior Design…” Kobnithikulwong’s conceptual framework consisted of a Person, a Process and a Product. The Person needs to have a creative personality and vivid visual imagery. The Process needs to have an Internal Visualization and an External Representation of that visualization which is the Product. Kobnithikulwong designed a drawing and writing task and also measured students’ VVIQ and creativity scales.

The students were allowed 30 minutes to do a drawing of a “transitional space within a building” and 10 minutes to write a description of being in the space. Significant differences were found between the high and low creative performance students. Low creative performance produced narratives averaging 73 words. High creative performance produced narratives averaging at 133 words, nearly double the length. The low creatives contained linear and rectangular forms that gave the designs a static look. High creatives produced stronger dynamic movement in their designs by using curves and free-form elements. Solutions in the high group employed movement from curves to create perspective “Pulling a viewer into their spaces”, while low creatives did not make this kind of connection with the viewer. High creatives showed better quality perspective building techniques and designed spaces which were open on one side or end. Low creatives were mostly enclosed with a more limited perspective. High creatives showed high contrast and line weight while lows produced drawings that were less legible with low line weight and low contrast.

Kobnithikulwong (2007) concluded that: “The qualitative analysis indicated that judged creative performance, as an external representation of visualization, positively related to vividness of visual imagery or internal visualization.” The correlation between VVIQ score with eyes closed and creativity scores was .31, p<.02. Dividing the two groups at the median creativity score gave a significant difference of around 10 points in the VVIQ with eyes closed between the two creativity groups, p = .006. However, the scatterplot shows that the relationship is curvilinear and so the use of curvilinear regression (instead of linear) would have yielded a much stronger association.

New applications of mental imagery

Applications of mental imagery cross many different fields, including the arts, architecture, design, science, education, sports, IT, policy and planning. Global problems caused by human behaviour such as warming, poverty and over-population may be helped by applying mental imagery in creative ways. Human and planetary survival may ultimately depend upon the effective use of human imagination, including mental imagery.