Creativity and Spatial Ability: A Critical Evaluation

Massimiliano Palmiero and Narayanan Srinivasan

Introduction
Creativity is a mysterious and an important aspect of human thinking and problem solving.
Despite several varied definitions of creativity, researchers generally agree that creativity
involves the ability to produce a work that is both original and appropriate (Mumford 2003;
Sternberg & Lubart 1996). Many studies have been conducted in order to understand the
processes that contribute to creative outcomes (Palmiero, Nakatani, Raver, Olivetti
Belardinelli, & van Leeuwen, 2010). Although many of these processes are generally
understood as involving high-level mental representations, such as application of
knowledge, analogy, combination of elements, and abstraction (Welling 2007), as well as
various processing stages relying on preparation, incubation, illumination and verification
(Goswami 1996; Wallas 1926), creativity may also depend on more domain-specific
cognitive skills, such as visuo-spatial abilities, or verbal proficiency (Palmiero et al. 2010).
This latter view emphasizes that as individuals show differences in domain-specific cognitive
processes, they can reveal differences in creativity as well.
In particular, the present chapter explores the role of spatial ability in creativity. The purpose
is to understand the extent to which visualizing and manipulating two- or three-dimensional
stimuli can really provide a person with many different perspectives of the same problem,
involving multiple creative ideas in different domains. In general, spatial ability is considered
an important factor of intelligence (Binet 1916; Gardner 1983; Guilford 1967; Lohman 2000;
Thurstone 1931). It has been found to be important for mathematics, especially for geometry
(Battitsta 1990; Battista & Clements 1996; Battista, Wheatley & Talsma 1982), chemistry
(Pribly & Bodner 1987), and physics (Pallrand & Sbeer 1984), as well as to predict
scholastic and occupational success in scientific research, engineering and art (Humphreys,
Lubinski, & Yao 1993), as well as in more technical fields: architecture, cabinetmaking, and
mechanics (Lohman 1979; McGee 1979). In this direction, Lubinski (2010) strongly claims
that when selecting students for advanced learning opportunities in science, technology,
engineering and mathematics, the level of spatial ability should always be considered as a
critical variable of individual differences. Given this body of evidence, it is natural to suppose
that spatial ability is important for creative thinking too.

In order to understand whether creativity relies on spatial ability, we present important

theoretical and operative approaches to creativity in the next section followed by an
overview of the construct of spatial ability. This is necessary to understand the concepts and
measures of creativity that have been related to mostly spatial ability measures over the
years. We then present the studies directly investigating the relationships between creativity
and spatial ability focusing on a specific spatial ability factor. In addition, studies which did
not directly look at the correlation between creativity and spatial ability measures, but only
reported the differences on the spatial tasks contrasting groups of participants (e.g.,
artists/non artists, designers/non designers) are also discussed followed by conclusions
based on the review of the studies involving creativity and spatial ability.

Current approaches and methodologies to study creativity

So far, a large variety of approaches have been developed to investigate creativity. The
most influential one is Guilfords (1950, 1967) psychometric approach: creativity relies on
divergent thinking, which is an open-ended mental process oriented to find many new,
appropriate, and different answers to a particular problem. Influenced by this approach,
several creative measures were proposed, the most popular of these is the Torrance Test
of Creative Thinking (TTCT) (Torrance, 1974). An example of divergent thinking task is the
Alternative Uses Test (AUT): participants are asked to come up with as many different
alternative uses for a specific object (e.g., newspaper) as possible in a specified time. By
using this task, divergent thinking ability can be assessed by a numbers of variables:
ideational fluency (number of ideas), degree of novelty (uniqueness of ideas), flexibility
(number of categories which encompass the ideas), and elaboration (numbers of details
provided along with the ideas).
Influenced by Guilfords approach, Mednick (1962) developed the associative theory of
creativity. Given a semantic network, a creative person is capable of accessing both closely
and remotely associated concepts. Creativity requires associating two or more previously
unconnected or dissimilar thought elements in order to get a combination that meets prespecified requirements (Ranjan & Srinivasan 2010). This theory was operationalized using
the Remote Associate Test (RAT): given three words (e.g., same, head and tennis), each of
them can be associated with a solution word (in this example: match) in three different
ways: by synonymy (same = match), by forming a compound word (head-match), and by
finding a semantic association (tennis match). Recently this test has been modified: given
three words (e.g., age, mile, sand), the goal is to find a solution word (e.g., stone), which

can be used to form three different compound words (stone-age, milestone and sand stone)
(Jung-Beeman & Bowden 2000; Bowden & Jung-Beeman 1998, 2003, 2007).

Afterwards, Mendelsohn (1976) proposed the theory of defocused attention to explain

creativity. According to this theory, it is important to consider how attention resources are
allocated. More defocused attention results in increased creativity. When attention is
defocused, a higher number of elements can be processed at the same time, allowing a
greater number of resulting combinations. However, although creativity can be the result of
defocused attention (Martindale 1999), the ability to deliberately direct attention to pertinent
information is also very important for creative thinking (Dietrich 2004). In general, this theory
was typically tested using divergent thinking tasks.
An important advance in creativity research is the creative cognition approach that was
introduced with the Geneplore model (Finke, Ward, & Smith 1992; Smith, Ward, & Finke
1995), which does not focus on individual differences, but on mental operations involved in
creativity (Abraham & Windmann 2007). The Geneplore model assumes that creativity is
structured by generative and exploratory processes. Generative processes (e.g. memory
retrieval, association, mental synthesis) are used in the mental construction of various types
of pre-inventive structures, whereas exploratory processes (e.g., attribute finding,
conceptual interpretation, functional inference) are used successively to examine and
interpret the pre-inventive structures, which in turn can be modified or replaced by further
generative processes. This approach was operationalized by using the creative synthesis
task, the conceptual expansion task, and constraining effects of examples with the toy task.
The creative mental synthesis task (Finke 1990; Finke 1996; Finke & Slyton 1988; Finke et
al. 1992) allows imagining, combining, and transforming simple elements (e.g., square, wire
and handle) in order to make a creative object, which can be judged by independent judges
on different dimensions, such as originality (novelty) and practicality (functionality). The
conceptual expansion task assesses the ability to deviate from existing schemas (e.g., the
one which refers to earth animals) and expand the basic concept. Finally, the constraining
effects of examples with the toy task measures the ability to create a toy which does not
conform to exemplars that participants are exposed to. In Smith, Ward and Schumachers
(1993) standard task, participants are required to generate a novel toy after being exposed
to three

different toys, which share three fundamental characteristics: ball, intense physical
activity, and electronics.

The construct of spatial ability

Spatial ability involves many different factors and cannot be defined as a single dimensional
entity. Indeed, spatial ability includes first of all vision, that is the process of identifying and
locating objects in the external world. In particular, vision refers to the perception of shapes,
colors, metric distance, two-dimensional (2-D) patterns, three-dimensional (3-D) simple
geometric forms, abstract pattern, line drawings, smooth surfaces, and so on. According to
Xu (1999), three sources of information are used when perceiving visual objects:
spatiotemporal information, since objects generally move within a specific space as wholes;
property information, given that objects can be differentiated in terms of features like color,
shape, texture, luminance; semantic information, which includes the knowledge about
categories and properties related to objects.
In general, visual perception of objects relies on grouping and figure-ground Gestalt
principles. Grouping describes how individual elements come together to form a
perceptual whole. The most important stimulus-driven principles of grouping are proximity,
similarity, good continuation, and common fate (Wertheimer 1923). Figural-ground
involves the perception of the contour separating two regions as belonging to one of the
two regions. As summarized by Palmer (1999), factors that affect figuralground
organization are size, surroundedness, orientation, contrast, symmetry, parallelism, and
convexity. Spatial ability is connected to these aspects of visual perception. It is believed
that what we perceive spatially is not the perception of space but the relationship between
objects in space (Arnheim 1969). Besides basic perception of spatial relationships, there
are specific spatial abilities which can be possessed at different levels of expertise.
According to Carroll (1993), there are five first-order independent spatial factors within the
domain of visual perception: visualization, speed rotation, closure speed, flexibility of
closure, perceptual speed, plus the visual memory factor. Visualization refers to the
capacity to perceive spatial forms and rotate them in two- or three-dimensions before
matching it with another spatial form (Eliot & Smith 1983). Speed rotation relies on the
capacity to perceive an object from different positions, and usually involves speeded tests
with rotated mirrored stimuli (Lohman, 1988). Closure speed is defined as the ability to
identify quickly an incomplete or distorted picture (Lohman et al., 1987, pag. 266).
Flexibility of closure reflects the ability to break one gestalt and form another (Lohman,

Pellegrino, Alderton, & Regian, 1987, p. 265). According to Carroll (1993), this factor
sometimes can be indistinguishable from the visualization factor. Perceptual speed'
relies on speed in comparing figures or symbols, scanning to find figures or symbols
(Ekstrom, French, Harman, & Dermen 1976: 123). Recently, the flexibility of closure and
speed perception factors were found to be combined in one single dimension (Burton &
Fogarty 2003).
Regarding the visual memory factor, it refers to the ability to remember the configuration,
the location and orientation of figural material, involving the formation, inspection,
transformation of visual information in the minds eye in the absence of a visual stimulus
(Carroll 1993; Lohman 1979). This factor was found to share a big portion of correlation with
the general visualization factor (Carroll 1993). Indeed, similar to visual percepts, mental
images preserve visual elements and relationships amongst them as a single chunk in
working memory. Visual mental images can represent colors, shapes, metrical distance, 2and 3-dimensional objects, and so on. Although with some limitation, visual mental images
can be rotated (Shepard & Metzler 1971), scaled (Larsen & Bundesen 1978), scanned
(Kosslyn, Ball, & Reiser 1978), inspected (Thompson, Kosslyn, Hoffman, & van Der Kooij
2008), combined (or synthesized), and reinterpreted (Finke, Pinker, & Farah 1989).
Recently, the visual memory was included in the first-order independent spatial factors
(Burton & Fogarty 2003).
In this direction, the visual imagery factor was also recognized by Carroll (1993) as a
potential spatial ability factor. Given that visual imagery can be divided into different subprocesses, or more generally into object and spatial imagery (Blajenkova, Kozhevnikov, &
Motes, 2006), it is unclear how to co-locate it within the domain of spatial ability. According
to Burton and Fogarty (2003) visual imagery can be divided into imagery quality, which is
the ability to generate, maintain, and transform a visual image (in terms of response
accuracy), imagery speed (in terms of response times), and self-report imagery (measured
as vividness and control of visual mental images), and that all of these first-order mental
imagery factors can be located within the spatial ability domain. In particular, the self-report
imagery factor was found as a separate dimension of spatial ability under the condition that
the stimuli used in the self-report scales were similar to those used in spatial tests.
Therefore, given that spatial ability is a multidimensional construct which can rely on vision
and mental imagery, the present review will consider the issue of creativity as related to
spatial ability, both in perception and imagery domains. In other words, although many
studies refer to spatial ability by using different concepts and constructs than those proposed

by Carroll (1993) as well as Burton and Fogarty (2003), the relationships between creativity
and spatial ability will be explored mostly according to the first-order independent factors
classification just presented and the tests used to assess spatial ability.

The role of Visualization factor in creativity

Perceiving or imagining spatial forms and rotating them in two- or three-dimensions before
matching it with another spatial form may provide a person with creative ideas in any field of
knowledge. These cognitive operations can help people to combine ideas and consequently
realize more creative solutions. Different tests can be used to assess this ability. The
Surface Development Test (Ekstrom et al., 1976) is the most common one: participants are
presented with a series of flattened three-dimensional shapes that they have to mentally
assemble in order to match lettered edges with numbered edges on an assembled shape. In
the paper-folding test (Ekstrom et al., 1976), participants are instructed to imagine the
folding and unfolding of pieces of paper in order to select one of five drawings to indicate
what the punched sheet would look like when fully opened. In the Cube Comparisons Test
(Ekstrom et al., 1976) participants examine two similar shapes or marked cubes and
determine if they could possibly be the same. In the Block Design Test (Weschler, 1981)
participants are instructed to use the blocks to construct a series of 8 patterns represented
by two dimensional pictures. This test is considered to be a relatively accurate measure of
spatial visualization ability in daily life (Groth-Marnat, & Teal, 2000). In the Isham Test
(Isham, 1997) participants are requested in the first part to use two-dimensional and threedimensional drawing and identify the correct fifth view from four options and in the second
part to use the three-dimensional view and identify the incorrect two-dimensional view from
three options.
In one of the first studies carried out to clarify the relationship between visualization and
creativity, Karlins, Schuerhoff, and Kaplan (1969) measured creativity in 17
undergraduate students of architecture by administering the Remote Associate Task, and
by letting two independent judges rate them on creative ability according to their own
conception of creativity. In order to assess the spatial visualization ability, the Cube
Comparisons Test, and the Surface Development Test were used. Results demonstrated
that the performance only with the Cubes test highly correlated with rated creativity. This
study suggested that creativity in architecture may rely on the spatial factor of
Visualization.

Morrison and Wallace (2001) selected 54 undergraduate psychology students out of 120
based on the scores from the Creative Behavior Inventory (CBI) (Hocevar, 1979, 1980). For
measuring creativity, they used the original Finke and Slaytons (1988) creative mental
synthesis task: participants were allowed to combine the elements in more than one object
within the given time. Inventions were then scored by four independent judges both for
creativity and recognizability. In addition, for each participant the following scores were
computed: the total number of inventions generated across all trials (divergent production);
the mean of creativity ratings for the inventions, which participants were indicated as the
best one for each trial; the mean of recognizability ratings of inventions labeled by
participants as best ones; the mean rated creativity for all reported inventions; the mean
rated recognizability for all reported inventions; the mean judged creativity rating for the most
creative image for each trial, and the mean of the corresponding recognizability ratings. To
measure the Visualization ability, the Surface Development Test and the direct mental
synthesis task (Finke, Pinker & Farah, 1989) were administered. In this latter task,
participants were verbally guided in generating and transforming a series of symbols until a
mental image formed a recognizable object. Then, participants were asked to name and
draw the resulting mental image. Results showed that all measures of creativity correlated
significantly with the Surface Development Test and the direct mental synthesis task, with
the exception of the total number of inventions generated across all trials at the creative
mental synthesis task (divergent production). According to the authors, these findings show
that image transformation is generally involved in the production of creative images.
More recently, Ryder, Pring, and Hermelin (2002) measured creativity in an artistically gifted
group of young adults, and a control group matched on intelligence by using two divergent
thinking tasks adapted from Getzels and Jackson (1962): the Word Meaning Test, in which
participants had to give as many definitions as possible for a common word and the
Alternative Uses Task, in which participants had to come up with as many as different
alternative uses for a common object. The test used to measure the Visualization ability
was the Block Design Test. Interestingly the authors found that artistically talented students
outperformed the control group on both the word meaning task and the Alternative Uses
Task, as well as on the Block Design Test. However, within both the talent and the control
group no significant correlation was found between the performance of the creativity tasks
and the Block Design Test.
Recently, Allen (2010) explored more systematically the link between creativity of thirty-three

interior design students and spatial ability in terms of visualization. Eleven professionals in
the field of interior design were used as independent judges to evaluate open-ended
projects in an entertainment space designed for twenty college-age people where physical
activity was the main component. The project could be abstract or realistic. The independent
judges were instructed to rate each project on a nine-point rating scale ranging from 1 (very
low) to 9 (very high) in terms of appropriateness, creativity, and novelty, based on the
Consensual Technique of Interior Design Creativity (Barnard 1992 an adaptation of
Amabiles (1993) Consensual Assessment Technique). The judges had to consider
separately the degree to which the project was appropriate, creative, and novel, using their
own subjective definitions of these terms. To assess spatial ability, Ishams (1997) paper
and pencil visualization test was used. Using the Pearson product-moment correlation, no
significant correlation was found between visualization and creativity, even when the
visualization score was adjusted. Consequently, the study concluded that there is no
evidence to support the relationship between creativity and visualization spatial ability in the
interior design students.

Cho (2012) also studied the relationships among Visualization ability, creativity, and studio
performance in twenty-one freshman architecture students. Creativity was measured by the
visual form of the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking. The Visualization ability was
measured by the Paper Folding Test, and the Visualization of Viewpoints Test (Guay and
McDaniels 1976). Authors also included the Mental Rotation Test (Peters et al. 1995) in the
battery. The architecture spatial ability was measured by the computer-based Architectural
Spatial Ability Test. This latter includes 15 multiple-choice questions divided into three types:
given a 2D floor plan, a corresponding 3D picture of the space should be selected; given a
3D image of a space, participants are asked to select a corresponding 2D floor plan of the
space; given a 3D-perspective view of one architectural structure, a corresponding 2D floor
plan of the space should be found. Finally, the studio performance, a house design for an art
centre curator, was scored with a letter grade. The correlation analysis showed that the
creativity index was not correlated either to the spatial ability tests administered, or the
computer-based Architectural Spatial Ability Test. Only the studio grade was marginally
correlated to the computer-based Architectural Spatial Ability Test. According to the author,
the students performance in the architectural design does not involve the Visualization
ability or the ability to generate many different alternatives (fluency) or original ideas
(originality).

Kozhevnikov, Kozhevnikov, Jiao Yu, and Blazhenkova (2013) investigated the relationship
between artistic and scientific creativity, Visualization abilities, and styles (object and
spatial). The creativity ability was assessed by the Torrance Test of Creative Thinkingpicture completion task (Torrance, 1972), asking participants to finish ten incomplete
drawings and make up an interesting title for each, the Insight Problem Solving Task (spatial
subscale) (Dow & Mayer, 2004), requiring overcoming the constraints of routine ways of
thinking, e.g. the nine-dot problem, and the Creative Behavior Inventory (CBI). The
Visualization ability as defined above was assessed by the Paper Folding Test. Authors
also included the Mental Rotation Test (Shepard & Metzler, 1971), the Degraded Picture
Test (Kozhevnikov et al., 2005) and the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ)
as measures of Visualization ability, although these tests better measure Speed Rotation
ability, Flexibility of Closure ability, and Imagery ability, respectively. The Object-Spatial
Imagery and Verbal Questionnaire (OSIVQ) (Blazhenkova & Kozhevnikov, 2009) was also
used. This test is a self-report measure assessing individuals visual (object and spatial) as
well as verbal cognitive style dimensions. The principal component analysis revealed that
spatial ability, as measured by the Paper Folding Test, spatial style (OSIVQ-spatial) and
scientific creativity (CBI-science and insight problems) were loaded on the first factor,
whereas object ability as measured by the VVIQ, object styles (OSIVQ-object), and artistic
creativity (CBI-art and Torrance Test) measures were loaded on the second factor; verbal
style (OSIVQ-verbal) and verbal creativity (CBI-literature) measures were loaded on the third
factor. These results were also confirmed by the linear regression analysis using composite
scores. According to authors Visualization abilities and styles are important for the
corresponding creativity dimension, with implications in applied fields, such as visual
art/science education, personnel selection, and career planning.
Considering these results in totality, the emerging picture of the relationship between
creativity and spatial visualization ability is unclear. When studies using special samples of
participants are reviewed (that is, when creativity is not measured by administering specific
tasks), results are even more contradictory. Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi (1964) found that
creative performance as measured by college art grades for all students was found to be
correlated to the scores obtained on the Guilford-Zimmermann Aptitude Surveys subtest of
spatial visualization, particularly Form B (Guilford & Zimmerman, 1956), in which
participants were asked to visualize the movements of an object in space and indicate its

position among five options. However, the study did not include a sample of highly creative
male art students.
In a subsequent study, Winner, Casey, DaSilva, and Hayes (1991) compared
undergraduate students in art, math/science and verbal/linguistic field on the Surface
Development Test. Results revealed that art students scored better than verbal, but
significantly worse than math/science students. When scores were corrected for the
Scholastic Aptitude Test, art students outperformed both math/science and verbal
groups of students (Winner and Casey, 1992). By contrast, Kay (1996) found no
significant differences in either Surface Development Test scores or Guilford
Zimmerman Aptitude Surveys scores between visual artists regularly exhibiting in New
York galleries and postgraduate students without any artistic background.
More recently, Kozbelt (2001) found that first-year art students performed significantly better
than novices on the Mental Rotation Task (Hunt, Davidson, & Lansman, 1981), consisting of
rotating and matching 48 three-dimensional stimuli with each other. When Ryder et al.

(2002) used discriminant analysis to understand how well scores on the Block Design
Test, Word Meaning Task, and Alternative Uses Task predicted the participants artistic
talent, results identified the scores on the block design as being primarily involved in the
function (r = .57), and meaning (r = .49) with alternative uses (r=.49) being secondarily
important. According to the authors, these results reveal that spatial ability or
segmentation, in terms of local over global processing, and divergent thinking are the
significant factors in the determination of artistic talent independent of intelligence. In this
direction, Ginn and Pickens (2005) revealed that women who were musicians or artists
scored better at the Mental Rotation Test MRT (Vandemberg and Kuse, 1978) than
those women who had no experience with these activities. In other words, women who
benefitted from experience with spatial activities were better in rotating and comparing
visual stimuli, whereas this was not the case for men. Yet, Calabrese and Marucci
(2006) revealed that artists performed worse than non-artists in tasks involving mental
rotation processes on complex and abstract stimuli that were probably hard to segment.
However, Kozhevnikov, Kosslyn and Shepard (2005) administered the Paper-Folding Test
to 10 visual artists and 14 scientists, and found that scientists performed better than visual
artists indicating their superior ability in processing spatial information. Blajenkova, et al.
(2006) confirmed this result: scientists outperformed visual artists and humanity
professionals on the spatial imagery scale of the Object-Spatial Imagery Questionnaire

(OSIQ), whereas visual artists and humanity professionals were better than scientists on the
object imagery scale of OSIQ. Taken together these findings suggest that visual artists use
object rather than spatial imagery while scientists use spatial rather than object imagery.

The role of Speed Rotation factor in creativity

This spatial factor involves the ability to perform rotations of stimuli. It is normally measured by
using the Space Relations test from the Differential Aptitude Test Battery (DAT; Bennett,
Seashore, & Wesman 1989), or the Shepard and Metzler (1971) mental rotation test. Shepard
(1978) was one of the first researchers to emphasis the role of mental rotation in creativity.

However, although the role of mental rotation in creativity was largely investigated, speed
rotation was rarely considered a possible variable affecting creativity. Palmiero et al. (2010)
represents one of the rare studies explicitly exploring the role of speed rotation on creativity.
Creativity was measured in visual and verbal domains by using different tasks. Visual
creativity was measured by the figural combination task (Finke 1990) in terms of originality
and practicality, and by the figural completion task (Torrance 1974) in terms of fluency,
flexibility, originality and elaboration. Verbal creativity was measured by the creative story
generation (Howard-Jones, Blakemore, Samuel, Summers, & Claxton 2005) in terms of
originality and formal style, and by the Alternate Uses Test (Guilford 1967) in terms of
fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration. Speed rotation was measured by the
traditional Shepard and Metzlers (1971) task. Results revealed that speed rotation did not
correlate with any of the dimensions of creativity, both in visual and verbal domain. As
regards the role of speed rotation in artists, it is plausible to assume that training in arts
enhances the ability to rotate stimuli fast. However, from the little we know about studies
investigating speed rotation and creativity, there are no conclusive results. Ascher (2000)
even found that artists (both males and females) were not faster than non-artists at the
mental rotation task with simple stimuli. According to the author, probably more complex
stimuli should be used to confirm the superiority of artists in mental rotation.

The role of Closure speed factor on creativity

This factor relies on the ability to complete pictures without any obvious closure to start with
(Carrol 1993). The Gestalt Completion Test (Ekstrom et al. 1976) is commonly used to
assess this spatial ability. The test measures the ability to perceive an apparently
disorganized or unrelated group of parts as a meaningful whole, that is, the obvious closure
is not shown at the beginning. Unfortunately, the literature exploring the relationship
between Closure speed and creativity is very sparse. Recently, Kozbelt (2001) contrasted

17 first-year art students with 16 novices on different spatial tasks. When the comparison
involved the Gestalt Completion Test, consisting of eleven partly drawn common objects to
identify in 5 minutes, art students outperformed novices. Although this study supports the
role of the Closure speed factor for creativity, more studies are necessary to address the
issue better.

The role of Flexibility of Closure factor in creativity

Flexibility is considered one of the most important factors involved in creativity. Here,
flexibility refers to the capacity to reinterpret a pattern or figure in another way, breaking the
old perceptual structure and forming a new one, or finding a picture in a more complex
pattern. In general, the Hidden Pattern Test is used to measure this ability (Burton &
Fogarty 2003). However, the Group Embedded Figures Test, or the Embedded Figure task
(Witkin, Oltman, Raskin, & Karp 1971), and the Hidden Shapes Test (Ekstrom et al. 1976)
are also used to assess the flexibility of closure. In all of these tests participants are
instructed to identify a simple figure or a drawing shape within a more complex pattern.
Tests based on mere ambiguous figures can also be considered as a measure for the
flexibility of closure factor.
Using participants without artistic training, Riquelme (2002) found that highly creative
individuals, as measured at the creative mental synthesis task, were more accurate and
faster in reinterpreting ambiguous figures than low-creative ones. On the contrary, Palmiero
et al. (2010) found that participants with high originality and high practicality scores on the
creative mental synthesis task were slower, whereas participants with high scores on the
figural completion task were faster in finding alternative interpretations of ambiguous
figures. Although these findings appear to be contradictory, it should be noted that Riquelme
(2002) scored compositions using dichotomic judgments, whereas Palmiero et al. (2010)
scored compositions according to originality and practicality. Riquelme (2002) used single
presentation of ambiguous figures, whereas in Palmiero et al. (2010) the figures to be
reinterpreted were delivered as a series of six stimuli, starting from one unambiguous
extreme to another (Hogeboom 1995), and participants were instructed to determine as
early and accurately as possible alternative interpretations of the figures in the series of
stimuli.
With respect to the studies on artists, Ryder et al. (2002) measured creativity in an artistic,
talented group and control group by using the Word Meaning Task and the Alternative Uses
Task, and the Flexibility of Closure ability by administering the Group Embedded Figures

Test. Results showed that although the talented group performed better at identifying hidden
figures, the scores of the two divergent tests were not correlated to the scores collected on
the Group Embedded Figure Test. Moving on to studies which did not measure creativity
directly, but compared samples of participants, Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi (1976)
revealed that artistically gifted students showed superior performance on the Hidden
Shapes Test. A similar result was found by Kozbelt (2001) with a group of first-year art
students performing significantly better than a group of novices at the Embedded Figure
Task.
Taken together these results confirm that flexibility plays a key role in creativity. As clarified
by Verstijnen et al. (1998a, 1998b), cognitive flexibility needs to take the contrasting
characteristics of combining and restructuring processes into account, especially when the
creative mental synthesis task, which encompasses a strong spatial component (Eardley &
Pring 2007; Pearson, Logie & Gilhooly 1999), is involved.

The role of Speed Perception factor on creativity

This spatial factor refers to the ability to perceive and discriminate visual patterns quickly.
In general, the Identical Picture Test is used to assess this ability (Ekstrom et al. 1976).
The Inspection Time (IT) paradigm could also be considered as a reliable measure of
speed perception ability. This paradigm requires the discrimination of two vertical lines of
different lengths presented tachistoscopically. The mental speed approach to human
intelligence has produced converging evidences for a substantial relationship between
intelligence and speed perception in elementary cognitive tasks. Using the IT paradigm,
several studies have revealed a strong correlation between intelligence scores and
inspection performance, with higher intelligence scores linked to shorter inspection times
(Kranzler & Jensen 1989; Nettelbeck 1987; Neubauer & Knorr 1998; Rindermann &
Neubauer 2004).
Given these results, the speed perception ability could also be considered as a powerful
spatial factor for creativity. Rindermann and Neubauer (2004) tested the link between
mental speed and creativity. In order to measure creativity, authors administered to two
hundred seventy one students the following tests: the Verbaler Creativitats-Test (Schoppe
1975), where participants had to find reasonable and innovative sentences starting from four
given letters, and the Verwendungs Test (Facaoaru 1985), requiring participants to produce

different applications of given objects (this test is similar to the Alternative Uses Test). To
measure speed of information processing, authors used the Zahlen-Verbindungs Test
(Oswald & Roth 1978), requiring participants to write down in ascending order random
arranged numbers (from 1 to 90) within 30 seconds, and the Coding Test (Lindley, Smith, &
Thomas 1988), requiring participants to copy letters, numbers, or circle segments one
sequence forward or backward. Results revealed a positive correlation between speed
perception and creativity. Authors concluded that processing speed influences higher mental
abilities (e.g., creativity) which, in turn, influence performance (e.g., school grades).
However, given that highly creative people exhibit defocused attention, while performing
ambiguous tasks, the speed of mental processing may be slow because they are poor at
filtering out the irrelevant aspects of stimuli (Kwiatkowski, Vartanian, & Martindale 1999).
Indeed, Vartanian, Martindale and Kwiatkowski (2007) clarified that the relationship between
creative potential and speed of information processing is determined by how attention
resources are allocated. They measured the creative potential by standardizing and
averaging scores obtained on the Remote Associate Test (RAT), the Alternative Uses Test
(AUT), and the Creative Personality Scale (Gough 1979), consisting of 30 items that have
positive (indicating creative potential) or negative (indicating no creative potential) weights.
The speed information processing was measured using different measures. Amongst others,
authors used two perceptual speed tasks: the Hick Task (Hick 1952) requiring them to
detect a yellow circle which appeared above any unlabeled button, and the Global
Precedence Task (Navon 1977), in which participants had to respond to either the big letter
or the small letters that made up the big letter. Results revealed a negative correlation
between the creative potential and reaction time on the Hick Task, which involves no
interference, and a positive correlation between the creative potential and reaction time on
the Global Precedence Task, involving the inhibition of interfering information. In other
words, creative participants would be fastest when distraction is minimal and focus attention
maximal, such as in the Hick Task, and slowest when distraction is maximal and focus
attention minimal, such as in the Global Precedence Task during trials where global features
were inhibited in favor of local features. These results were basically replicated by Dorfman,
Martindale, Gassimova, and Vartanian (2008) with Russian high school students of both
sexes.

The role of Visual Memory factor in creativity

This spatial ability can be assessed by using memory tasks which involve the recall of stimuli
in the minds eye, such as by the following three: Shape memory, Building memory, Map
memory (Ekstrom et al. 1976), or by the Visual Memory test based on the Benton visual
retention task (Anastasi 1982), in which participants had to remember as many of the
designs as possible and reproduce them after they were presented. The empirical support
that artistic background may improve the memory for visual materials is puzzling. Rosenblatt
and Winner (1988) examined incidental rather than deliberate visual memory in students
(aged 11 to 14 years) who demonstrated unusual talent in drawing and those with only
average ability. Participants were shown a pair of pictures and were asked which one they
preferred. After some time, participants were shown the pictures again (one was altered,
along dimensions of line quality, composition, colour, form and content), and asked to
identify the altered picture and describe the details of the changes they observed. Results
revealed that art students were better than non-artists at detecting an altered picture and
indicating what had been changed. Similar results were found by Sullivan & Winner (1989),
who found that art students outperformed psychology majors at recalling pictures altered in
small segments. Casey, Winner, Brabeck, and Sullivan (1990), corroborated the results by
demonstrating that visual artists can generate high-resolution pictorial images, scoring
higher on visual memory tests, even when compared to scientists. However, compared to
undergraduate students in design or studio art, math/science and verbal field on a visual
recall task, Winner and Casey (1992) found that maths/science students outperformed the
other groups, even when group differences were corrected by using the Scholastic Aptitude
Test. In addition, Ryder, et al. (2002) did not find any difference between artistic talented
students and the control group on the Visual Memory Test.

The role of Mental Imagery factor in creativity

This section discusses studies investigating mental imagery, especially imagery generation
and creativity. The imagery quality and the imagery speed factors, which may involve the
ability to generate, maintain, and transform a visual image, in terms of response accuracy
and response times will be considered as visuo-spatial imagery dimensions which can affect
creativity measures, or be differently possessed by talented and non-talented participants in
specific areas of knowledge. Regarding the issue of the self-report imagery factor (which
basically relies on imagery capacity (e.g., vividness and control of images), as linked to
creativity, LeBoutillier and Marks (2003) have already reviewed and discussed the relevant
studies, finding out that although self-report mental imagery and divergent thinking appear
related to each other, imagery capacity accounts only for approximately 3% of the variance

in divergent thinking tests. In this direction, Palmiero et al. (2010) found correlations
between fluency, flexibility and originality scores of the Alternative Uses Test, suggesting
that some aspects of verbal creativity rely on cross domain skills. In another study, Palmiero,
Cardi & Olivetti Belardinelli (2011) used the creative mental synthesis task to measure
creativity, and the VVIQ to measure the imagery capacity. Results demonstrated a positive
relationship between the vividness score and the practicality dimension of objects.
According to authors, the association vividnesspracticality would reflect the ability to use
pictorial information of imagery when inferring the practical action to be performed with
objects that belong to specific categories.

Imagining capacity, as measured by the Vividness of Visual Imagery Test (VVIT) (Campos,
1998), also appears to be associated with spatial information processing in people with
artistic training (Prez-Fabello & Campos, 2007). This means that mental imagery capacity
and creativity can be related in the presence of artistic training. In one of the first studies
looking at the differences on visuo-spatial imagery between different types of undergraduate
students, Zemore (1995) found that students who had studied art performed better at
generating mental images in order to identify letters of the Roman alphabet from which
various parts had been omitted. Prez-Fabello and Campos (2007) compared first- and fifthyear fine arts students on two imaging capacity tests, the Visual Elaboration Scale (Slee
1976) and the Vividness of Visual Imagery Test (Campos 1998), and three tests of drawing
involving spatial representation, transformation of spatial relations, and memory. Basically,
participants were instructed to draw a room from a description for assessing spatial
representation skills, draw the same room from a different perspective for assessing spatial
transformation skills, and draw a picture previously showed for assessing memory skills.
Results revealed that fifth year students outperformed first-year students in fine arts in all
tasks, showing that training in artistic skills considerably enhanced mental imaging capacity.

Concluding Remarks
From the literature reviewed it is hard to draw clear conclusions on the relationships
between creativity and spatial ability. The studies exploring the direct connection between
creativity and spatial abilities fail to present a clear picture. The experimental research
contrasting artists with controls or with other special samples of participants is also
puzzling. One clear conclusion is that more studies are necessary to better address the
issue.

However, with a closer look, it is possible to claim that the 'visualization' factor, involving
perception or imagination of spatial forms and rotation of them in two- or three-dimensions
before matching them with other forms, may be important for enabling creativity, especially
in artists. Contradictory results presented in this review can be interpreted keeping in mind
the consideration that artists are more of object visualizers than scientists, or mathematics,
which are more of spatial visualizers. Yet, the speed rotation factor does not seem to take
part in the creative process at all. This finding leads one to infer that creativity relies mostly
on the capacity to rotate complex stimuli accurately, rather than quickly. The Closure speed
factor also seems to be important, but given the scarcity of studies available it is not possible
to draw definitive conclusions. Concerning the flexibility of closure factor, the literature
confirms its extreme importance for creativity and its key role in the artistic field. The Speed
perception factor is linked to creativity as long as attention remains focused during the
creative process. Finally, Visual Memory and Mental imagery factors appears also to take
part in the creative process, especially in artists, but the extent to which these factors are
necessary is unclear.

In conclusion, the relationship between creativity and spatial ability is complex and not totally
clear. Of course creativity must involve spatial ability, as well as minimal intelligence, but
from the present review it seems that creativity does not necessarily require spatial
intelligence, unless specific creativity task constraints and expertise are matched. Yet, the
relationship can vary according to the task used to measure creativity and the level of
expertise in spatial activities. The question remains, however, whether the relationship
between spatial ability and creativity reflects inborn predisposition or is a result of acquired
expertise. Therefore, an interesting direction for future research is to investigate how
professional preferences develop in relation to the development of spatial abilities. Finally,
different approaches should also be pursued more systematically in order to better evaluate
the role of different variables in establishing the complex connection between creativity and
spatial ability, such as the distribution of spatial abilities in the brain according to the
creativity domain and expertise, the handedness issue, and, last but not least, the gender
issue.

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