**Abstract**

Science and technology getting continue to advance, the true wealth of our civilization will manifest in human creative output. Accordingly, technological developments offer great opportunities for creativity researches and assessment of creativity. While there are studies in the literature on the creation of computer-based creative products on the one hand, studies on whether creativity can be evaluated automatically or not, on the other hand, have started to attract attention. In addition, field experts turned to new research to understand whether creativity assessment could be automated and measured more quickly and qualitatively, and to explore whether this calculation method could be standardized. Researches conducted in the last 10 years have shown that computational approaches towards semantic distance have made significant contributions to the field both in theory and in practice. However, it can be said that there are very few studies that measure creativity based on semantic distance. This chapter presents a brief overview to discuss whether a computer-based measurement tool that can perform automatic calculations can be used in the evaluation of linguistic creativity in light of the evidence obtained from the literature.

**Keywords:** creativity, assessment of domain-specific creativity, tests of creative thinking, semantic distance, latent semantic analysis, This chapter is converted from some part of author's PhD thesis

### **1. Introduction**

*"Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know more." Confucius*

**179** Although, there have been tremendous studies on creativity over the decades, it can be said that there are many treasures that can be found in "the mining of creativity". Over the years, both the development/change process that humanity have been through and the technological advancements have resulted in the formation of various resources ranging from the definition to the evaluation of creativity. Despite these advancements, as each era brings its own needs, new necessities are occurring in the field of creativity. One of the necessities can be said to develop a web-based automatic scale to evaluate fairly the potential of the twenty-first century individual called as digital native. In this

chapter of the book, the questions tried to be answered: "What quantitative measures of semantic distance applied in research tell us about creativity or domain-specific creativity? Why is LSA getting be popular in recent research? Is LSA scores successfully predicted the average human creativity scores?". In addition, the definition of creativity, the tendency of creativity studies through the process, the studies about the evaluation of the creativity, the automatization about the evaluation of the domain-specific creativity and the usage of LSA and the related knowledge were discussed.

#### **1.1 The potential that humanity has and cannot be defined: creativity**

*"The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names."* 

*Socrates*

If the invention of writing is a turning point for the history of humanity, the speech that Guilford gave in the 1950s in American Psychological Association is the same for modern creativity studies. It can be said that this speech had an impactful effect on the domain experts. Before the speech of Guilford, the researches related to creativity were only % 0.2 in the Psychological Abstract index [1]. However, after this speech, it can be seen that both the amount of the studies and the results of them have increased in the field of creativity.

Recently, there are many definitions, theories, methods and scales available in the field of creativity. To begin with the definitions, Treffinger [2] has reviewed over 100 definitions in the field. Some of researchers has compiled 101 contemporary definition proposals from the children and the adults [3]. Despite so many definitions, as the studies of creativity cannot present a clear definition, this situation leads to inconsistent results [4]. This problem in the field of creativity can be likened to blind men and the elephant issues. When the recent studies are looked into, there is a wide range of discussions in the topics of like Covid-19 [5], defining oxytocin level [6], migration studies [7], creative process studies [8] using blind men and elephant issue for explaining. The blind men and elephant issue is based on the artwork of famous calligraphy artist Hanabusa Itchô (see more detail in [8]). In this artwork, a group of blind men tries to understand and define an elephant by touching its body but they have limited knowledge during this process. The shortage of knowledge leads them to make wrong or limited guesses. Similarly, this metaphor reflects the situation of the creativity field. Although, the studies focus on the different viewpoints of the creativity, the sum of the studies can be worthy for understanding the creativity.

When we look into the studies focusing on the theory and methods of the creativity, the most well-known classification in the field is seen to be the 4P Framework of Creativity (process, person, product, press) [9]. The other noticeable theories and models in the field can be listed as Associative Theory: stimulus-response (S-R) perspective [10], Structure of Intellect Model (SOI) [11], Incubation and Intuition [12, 13], Componential Model [14], Geneplore Model [15], Investment Theory of Creativity [16], Systems Model of Creativity [17], Amusement Park Theory [18], H-creativity [19], multiple levels of creativity (Big-C, Pro-c, little-c, and mini-c) called The Four-C Model of Creativity [20], The 5A's of Creativity: Person/Actor, Process/Action, Product/Artifact, Press/Audience & Affordances [21] and more recent one can be shown as the Minimal Theory of Creativity Ability [22]. All these studies can be seen as concrete proof of the hard work that field experts do to understand, evaluate and form the theoretical framework of creativity.

Creativity is studied for over a century, so there are many competing and complementary creativity tests in the field. It can be claimed that the situation is not pessimistic

#### *Perspective Chapter: New Approaches to the Assessment of Domain-Specific Creativity DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.102311*

regarding the evaluations done to evaluate creativity. For instance, according to the National Center on the Gifted and Talented, there are more than 100 techniques [3], 72 tests to evaluate the creativity by the center for creative learning, CLL [23] and Cropley [24] stated that there are at least 255 creativity tests in the literature [25]. According to Weiss, Wilhelm & Kyllonen [26], there are 228 identified creativity measures appearing in the literature since 1900. The many competing and complementary creativity tests in the field make it difficult for potential users to decide on their appropriateness. The most widely used creativity tests in the literature are presented by grouping in terms of 4P of the creativity and schemed by using Coggle.it in the below:

Because creativity is multidimensional and can be represented with different viewpoints, the way how creativity is defined affects how it will be measured and evaluated [25]. For that reason, in which ways creativity is evaluated has been tried to be explained in the above section. However, the scales that are known to measure creativity are usually limited in the sense of conception and psychometry. Moreover, as the choice of the staff and the training of them increase the expense, it reduces the functionality of these tests [27, 28]. According to Baer's severe criticism, the future of these tests is independent of their existence in the twenty first century or not is clearly suspicious [29].

#### **1.2 The tendency of creativity studies in the process**

Compared with the definition of creativity, it can be said that measuring creativity by using criterion-based objective rating scales is more difficult [30]. There are hundreds of tests to evaluate the creativity in the literature [31]. The methods and classifications used to classify and define the assessment types previously mentioned have been tried to be explained above (see **Figure 1**). The way of the tendency of the studies focusing on creativity has been explained below.

Sawyer [32] divided the studies related to the creativity into three categories. The first category consisted of the studies focusing on the creative person and the features of him/her; the second category consisted of the cognitive psychology experiments in the 1980s and the studies focusing on the cognitive aspect of creativity; the third category was defined as the studies dealing with the experiments conducted within the scope of sociocultural and interdisciplinary approach in the 1990s. The recent creativity studies focusing on the neurology and the computer-aided studies can be seen as the fourth category. Just as Guilford criticized the field of psychology for being indifferent to creativity, today, similar criticism is valid for the lack of studies in the field of neurology and artificial intelligence. In the visual given below, the previously mentioned four processes are schemed and presented (**Figure 2**).

It will not be a good approach to think of these categories separately from each other. Because science has a cumulative and progressive structure, it can be claimed that the results of the former studies shape and contribute to the latter studies.

## **1.3 Where does the nose of the ship show? Is creativity domain-general or domain-specific?**

Due to the fact that the creativity's own features, it is a quite generous field to do studies for the field experts. Besides, it can be said that it gives directions to creativity studies in each period. The field of the creativity has been a remarkable study field focusing on a particular field or discipline within the last 15–20 years (see [29, 33–36]). One of the reasons for this situation may be thought resulting from the fact that whether the creativity is domain-general or domain-specific. In other words, the wheel

**Figure 2.**

*The tendency of creativity studies in the process.*

of the ship has turned with an angle of 180°, and it is a sign of the fact that the nose of the ship also turned from domain-general to domain-specific. Along with this information, scientific creativity tests, artistic creativity tests, tests measuring the potential of linguistic creativity can also be included into the roof of the scales recognizing the creativity as domain-specific. Although, there are tests named verbal tests in the field, the tests which measure the potential linguistic creativity are needed in the field.
