Not all musicians are creative: Creativity requires more than simply playing music

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1 551088POM / Psychology of MusicSovansky et al. research-article2014 Article Not all musicians are creative: Creativity requires more than simply playing music Psychology of Music 2016, Vol. 44(1) The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalspermissions.nav DOI: / pom.sagepub.com Erin E. Sovansky, Mareike B. Wieth, Andrea P. Francis and Samuel D. McIlhagga Abstract Musical training has been found to be associated with increased creativity. However, it is not clear whether increased creativity, particularly divergent thinking, is associated with music expertise due to knowledge and skill, or if increased creativity arises from participation in the creation of music through practices such as improvisation and composition. This study investigated how level of music expertise and engagement in the creation of music relate to divergent thinking in musically trained adults (musicians). Sixty participants of varying music expertise were tested for divergent thinking using a modified version of Guilford s (1967) alternative uses task, in which participants listed creative uses for two music items and two non-music items. Results indicate that musicians who create music listed more creative uses for music items than non-musicians and musicians who do not create music. For non-music items, participants did not display differences in divergent thinking. Keywords alternative uses, creativity, divergent thinking, musical expertise, musical practices American jazz drummer Billy Higgins once said, Music. It s all creativity right here, right now. Like Higgins, many consider innovative musical works to be the result of creativity. Expert musicians have often been seen as possessing greater creativity than non-experts (e.g., Limb & Braun, 2008). However, whether the relationship between creativity and expertise is due to general experience and practice, or to the specific type of activities, such as improvisation and composition, someone engages in when becoming an expert musician, is unclear. This study investigated how musical expertise and the creative practices of musicians influence levels of creativity. Albion College, USA Corresponding author: Mareike B. Wieth, Department of Psychological Science, Albion College, 611 E. Porter St., Albion, MI USA. mwieth@albion.edu

2 26 Psychology of Music 44(1) Creativity and divergent thinking Creativity, as a concept, eludes definition (Torrance, 1988). Many researchers have tried to explain creativity and have posited a wide range of definitions. Hennessey and Amabile (1988), for example, describe creativity as the process of being original to suit some sort of purpose. Alternatively, Dartnall (2002) argues that creativity consists of the recombination of knowledge and information already present in the creator. Others see creativity as the process by which normal cognitive processes lead to a moment of insight in order to discover or produce something new (Perkins, 1981). While creativity lacks an agreed upon scientific definition, Torrance (1988) finds that a key component present in nearly every description of creativity is the ability of the creator to generate something novel or unique. Guilford (1967) proposes that at the heart of creativity is a process that he named divergent production, now called divergent thinking. Divergent thinking is the ability to generate new information or solutions from given information. The goal of divergent thinking is to generate as many associations or solutions as possible. Divergent thinking is an important component of creativity because it requires the ability to generate ideas without relying on guidelines or constraints (Gibson, Folley, & Park, 2009). For example, a musician composing a piece of music would need to use divergent thinking to create many possible combinations of sounds. There have been many approaches to measuring divergent creativity. For example, Csíkszentmihályi (1996) studied the characteristics of individuals judged to have made significant creative contributions to society. Thus, his measure of creativity was whether the person contributed something new to society. For Simonton (1997), many of the people in Csíkszentmihályi s study would be considered people with big-c creativity. Big-C creativity is said to occur when a person solves a problem or creates an object that has a major impact on society. On the other, hand, little-c creativity is the kind of creativity one might see on a daily basis when someone adapts to change or comes up with new ways of understanding a problem. A classic psychological measure of little-c divergent thinking is Guilford s (1967) alternative uses task, in which participants list several possible creative uses for a common household item, such as a newspaper, a brick, or a paperclip. In this task, there is no single correct answer, and participants must branch out and produce as many unique and creative uses as they can (e.g., origami, fly swatter, hat, picnic blanket, napkin etc.). While Guilford s measure of creativity does not assess the societal level contributions of big-c creative people, the task does measure an individual s daily divergent thinking potential because participants must generate many different uses for a single object. Research using divergent thinking tasks to measure creativity generally supports the idea that musicians are more creative than non-musicians. For example, Hamann, Bourassa, and Aderman (1990) found that creativity scores were higher for music majors than non-music majors. Additionally, Hamann and colleagues (1990) noted that students who had more than 10 years of music education had higher creativity scores than those with fewer than 10 years of experience. Similarly, Gibson et al. (2009) found that musicians scored higher on creativity tasks, including a version of Guilford s (1967) alternative uses task, than non-musicians. These results suggest that music expertise may be an important contributor to creativity scores. Expertise Based on the findings of Hamann et al. (1990) and Gibson et al. (2009), expert musicians show greater creativity than non-experts. But what exactly is an expert? Experts are individuals who possess extensive knowledge or skill in a specific domain as the result of lengthy training. It takes years of practice to reach an expert level. Studies have found that the average amount of time needed to become an expert is approximately 10,000 hours of practice, which roughly equates to hours of practice every day for 10 years (Ericsson & Charness, 1994; Levitin,

3 Sovansky et al ). Compared to novices, experts have more knowledge, better organization of knowledge, and better performance in their domain (Bédard & Chi, 1992). Another benefit for experts is the increased ability to remember information within their domain of expertise. For example, chess experts, when shown a mid-game chessboard, are better able to extract and remember information from that chessboard than novices (Chase and Simon, 1973; de Groot, 1965). Beilock (2010) suggests that experts experience increased memory function as a result of storing memories in a domain differently than do novices. For example, a chess expert might remember the entire chessboard as one item (i.e., a certain formation such as the Dragon Variation) whereas a novice would have to remember each individual chess piece as an item. There are also certain situations in which being an expert can be disadvantageous. As people become experts in a domain, they may become able to perform domain tasks more automatically. However, as the task becomes more automatic and less attention is required, it can become more difficult for experts to describe the exact details of how to perform the domain task. For example, in a study that compared expert and novice golfers, Beilock and Carr (2001) found that while expert golfers were able to give more detail than novices in describing the theoretical mechanics of a putt, they were actually worse at recalling exactly what they did in the particular putt. Like the expert golfers, an expert pianist no longer needs to devote as much attention to the basic mechanics of playing. The expert pianist can begin to focus more on phrasing and mood. However, because they are not attending to the basic task, an expert pianist may not be able to express exactly how they moved their fingers to play that piece of music. Another consequence of such automaticity is that an expert may become fixated or stuck on a specific way of thinking. For example, Wiley (1998) found that baseball experts had more difficulty than novices in coming up with creative solutions to problems that included baseballrelated terms because the baseball experts were fixated by their baseball knowledge and could not move past it in order to think of a non-baseball answer. Likewise, an expert musician might become fixated on a music item, like sheet music, as being only for a specific purpose, to be used to play music. It may be harder for an expert musician than a novice or non-musician to fold the sheet of music into a hat because the expert musician has so much more experience with using sheet music in a specific way. Regardless of the domain (chess, golf, baseball, or piano), all of the tasks require memory, attention, and motor skills to perform the task. Yet, the pianist is the only one of the experts listed above that might be considered creative. Thus it becomes important to understand whether expert musicians exhibit more divergent thinking, and therefore more creativity, than novice musicians or whether they become fixated on music and cannot be as creative, as seen with the baseball experts. Music expertise and creativity In addition to understanding how overall musical expertise influences divergent thinking, different types of experiences in music could also influence divergent thinking. In particular, Limb and Braun (2008) found differential brain activation in jazz pianists when simply playing basic scales compared to improvising a melody. More specifically, they found that when the pianists were improvising there was increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex in comparison to an increase in lateral prefrontal cortex activity when the pianists played scales. The medial prefrontal cortex, which was active when the pianists improvised, is a brain area associated with reduction of inhibition and increased creativity while the lateral prefrontal cortex, which was active while playing scales, is more associated with rule based or structured activity. This study therefore suggests that there is actually a difference between musicians who create music and musicians who play pre-written music in how they produce music.

4 28 Psychology of Music 44(1) Similar to the idea that creation of music and simply playing pre-written music lead to different types of experiences, Koutsoupidou and Hargreaves (2009) examined whether music education that includes open improvisation and creation of music promotes children s development of creative thinking beyond a structured music education program that is based on non-improvisatory teacher-led activities. In their study, two groups of 6-year-olds were given music lessons over a 6-month period. The experimental group performed a variety of activities, such as free exploration of instruments and expressing emotion with music, whereas the control group did not engage in any of these activities. Children in the experimental group had higher musical flexibility (dynamics, tempo, and pitch) and were shown to provide more original responses on the Webster s Measure of Creative Thinking in Music MCTM II (Webster, 1987, 1994) than the control group. Results from Limb and Braun (2008) s study with jazz pianists and Koutsoupidou and Hargreaves study with children (2009) suggest that creativity in music may be fostered by the participation in more creative aspects of music and not just from simply being an expert in music. The current study This study investigated how music expertise and the engagement in certain musical practices relate to creativity, specifically divergent thinking. In particular, this study examined divergent thinking in musically trained adults (musicians) using a modified version of Guilford s (1967) alternative uses. In this modified task, participants were presented with pictures of music objects, such as a metronome and non-music objects, such as a brick, and were asked to generate as many possible uses that they could think of for each item. The music items were included in order to assess musical creativity while the non-musical items were included to measure general creativity. Participants responses on the Guilford s alternative uses task were scored on number of uses listed (fluency), different categories of uses (flexibility), and the uniqueness of the uses compared to all participants (originality). Being a musician has generally been associated with an increase in creativity, however, based on the findings of Limb and Braun (2008) that jazz musicians brain activation differs depending on the type of musical activity they are engaged in, it is possible that the increase in divergent thinking in musicians may not be due to skill and knowledge alone. Based on Wiley s study, expert skill and knowledge alone could lead to fixation rather than creativity (Wiley, 1998). Further, Koutsoupidou and Hargreaves intervention with 6-year-olds (2009) suggests that creation of music is linked to increased musical creativity. We therefore predicted that increased divergent thinking in university-aged expert musicians will also be influenced by the participants engagement in the creation of music. If increased divergent thinking in musicians is also due to creation of music, we hypothesize that expert musicians who create music through improvisation, composition, or arrangement will have higher musical divergent thinking than non-experts and experts who simply play music without creating original music. Method Participants In total, 60 (34 female) college undergraduate students participated in this study. Participants ages ranged from yars (M = 19.08, SD = 1.29). Based on their years of musical experience, 18 participants were non-musicians who reported having no music experience, 20 participants reported having 1 9 years of experience (M = 3.04, SD = 3.60), and 22 participants reported having years of music experience (M = 12.50, SD = 2.15). Types of music experience

5 Sovansky et al. 29 ranged from 1 2 years of music lessons to nearly lifelong music training and active involvement in music ensembles; and from no creation of music experience to frequent practice of improvising, arranging and composing. We opted to focus on this range in expertise so that we could compare creativity scores across levels of expertise regardless of type of music produced. Participation was completely voluntary, and participants were recruited either through the music department ensembles, or through a pool of students enrolled in an introductory psychology course. Materials and procedure Participants first completed a musicianship questionnaire to determine both participants music expertise level and whether they participated in the creation of music. To determine music expertise, participants responses to the expertise portion of the musicianship questionnaire were given point values and then totaled for an overall music expertise score. For example, on the question Are you an instrumental musician? participants could answer either yes or no. In this question, a yes answer received one point while a no answer received zero points. Because this study involved music items that are more often used by instrumental musicians, the questions were weighted so that vocal music experience received half as many points as instrumental music experience, so a yes answer to the question Are you a vocal musician? only received a half point. Other questions included How many years have you played an instrument? and participants received a score equal to the number of years. In the current study, the minimum expertise score was 1.0 and the maximum score was 29.5 (Mean: 10.2). The musicianship questionnaire also assessed the extent to which participants took part in the creation of music. Creation of music questions included Have you ever composed an original musical work?, Have you ever arranged or transcribed music? and Do you often improvise when performing music? Participants received one point for a yes answer and zero points for a no answer. A total score for creation of music was formed by adding the scores of all three creation of music questions. Our sample had a minimum creation of music score of 0 and a maximum score of 3 (Mean: 1.2). In order to measure divergent thinking, participants completed a version of Guilford s (1967) alternative uses task. In this task, they were shown images of two music items and two non-music items, and were asked to come up with as many creative, but viable uses as possible for each item (see the Appendix). Music items were a trumpet mute and a metronome, and nonmusic items were a brick and a newspaper. This task was chosen because it can easily be adjusted to measure both musical and general creativity and is well known and widely used as a measure of divergent thinking. In addition, it was one of the tasks that Gibson et al. (2009) used when evaluating the relationship between musicians and creativity, which allows us to potentially replicate and extend their findings. Participants answers on Guilford s alternative uses task were scored for fluency, flexibility, and originality. Fluency was scored as the total number of creative uses listed. Flexibility was scored as the number of different categories of creative uses listed. Therefore, if a participant listed folding into a hat and folding into a boat as uses for newspaper, they would receive a fluency score of 2, but a flexibility score of 1 because both responses would fall under the category of origami or artwork. Originality for each item was scored by totaling all responses for that item across the data set. Types of responses that accounted for 5% or less of the total responses in the data set were given 1 point and responses that accounted for 1% or less of the total responses were given 2 points. Because this task is designed to measure creativity or alternative uses of items, standard uses of items did not count toward either the fluency, flexibility, or originality scores. For example, listing building houses as a use for a brick did not factor into any of the scores.

6 30 Psychology of Music 44(1) Results To determine the impact of music expertise, creation of music and the combined effect of these two factors on creativity for music and non-music items, six multiple regression analyses were conducted. Regression analyses were used because both music expertise and creation music scores were treated as continuous data where a participant s actual score on these measures was used instead of creating somewhat arbitrary categories. Correlations for all measures are provided in Table 1. The two sets of factor scores (expertise and creation of music) were centered in SPSS, and the interaction term was formed by multiplying the two centered predictors (Aiken & West, 1991). The data was centered so that both scores could be placed on a standardized scale and an interaction term could be created and analysed. Then, the two centered predictors and the interaction between these two factors were entered as predictors of fluency (see Table 2), flexibility (see Table 3), and originality (see Table 4) for both music and non-music items. The regression analysis for fluency of music items revealed a significant main effect for creation of music (β =.370, p =.024, sr 2 =.056) and a significant interaction of music expertise and creation of music (β =.246, p =.036, sr 2 =.048), but there was no significant main effect of music expertise on music item fluency (β =.151, p =.332, sr 2 =.010). See Figure 1 for a graphic representation of music item fluency scores. Regression analysis for flexibility of music items also revealed a significant main effect for creation of music (β =.339, p =.038, sr 2 =.047) and a significant interaction of music expertise and creation of music (β =.276, p =.019, sr 2 =.061) and no significant main effect of music expertise on both music item flexibility (β =.159, p =.306, sr 2 =.011). See Figure 2 for a graphic representation of music item flexibility scores. Regression analysis of originality for music items revealed a significant interaction effect of music expertise and creation of music (β =.342, p =.005, sr 2 =.094), and no significant main effects for music expertise (β =.255, p =.110, sr 2 =.029) or creation of music (β =.167, p =.309, sr 2 =.011). See Figure 3 for a graphic representation of music item originality scores. Regression analysis of non-music item fluency revealed no significant main effects for music expertise (β =.150, p =.421, sr 2 =.010) or creation of music (β =.220, p =.258, sr 2 =.019), and no significant interaction of music expertise and creation of music (β =.084 p =.545, sr 2 = 006). Regression analysis of non-music item flexibility also revealed no significant main effects for music expertise (β =.226 p =.223, sr 2 =.023) or creation of music (β =.169 p =.377, sr 2 =.011), and no significant interaction of music expertise and creation of music (β =.035 p =.522, sr 2 =.006). Like fluency and flexibility, regression analysis of non-music item originality revealed no significant main effects for music expertise (β =.138, p =.451, sr 2 =.008) or creation of music (β =.271, p =.154, sr 2 =.030), and no significant interaction of music expertise and creation of music (β =.094, p =.486, sr 2 =.007). Discussion Summary of findings The results of the divergent thinking task for music items revealed an interaction between music expertise and participation in creative aspects of music for fluency, flexibility, and originality. When listing creative uses for the music items, it was found that expert musicians who create music (improvisation, composition, and arrangement) showed increased divergent thinking compared to both non-experts and musicians that do not create music. Importantly, the significant main effects for creation of music on fluency, flexibility, and originality, showing that any participants (regardless of how long they have been practicing music) who create music show more divergent thinking than those who do not create music, further emphasizes this difference between those who create music and those who simply play the music written on the page.

7 Sovansky et al. 31 Table 1. Correlations among music expertise, creation of music, and scores on Guilford s alternative uses task. Variable Expertise Creation of music Music item fluency.520**.592** Music item flexibility.517**.591** Music item originality.509**.510** Non-music item fluency.346**.369** Non-music item flexibility.385**.377** Non-music item originality.376**.416** **p <.01. Table 2. Regressions of music expertise, creation of music, and interaction of music expertise and creation of music as predictors of fluency on Guilford s (1967) alternative uses task. Predictor variable Music item fluency Non-music item fluency B(β) SE B(β) SE Music expertise.038(.151) (.150).054 Creation of music.717(.370)* (.220).431 Interaction.062(.246)* (.084).040 Total R F ** 3.373* N Note. All predictors were entered simultaneously for both models. *p <.05; **p <.01. Table 3. Regressions of music expertise, creation of music, and interaction of music expertise and creation of music as predictors of flexibility on Guilford s (1967) alternative uses task. Predictor variable Music item flexibility Non-music item flexibility B(β) SE B(β) SE Music expertise.038(.159) (.226).048 Creation of music.624(.339)* (.169).380 Interaction.066(.276)* (.088).035 Total R F ** 3.888* N Note. All predictors were entered simultaneously for both models. *p <.05; **p <.01. There were no significant main effects or interaction effects present with the non-music items, suggesting the effects are domain specific. This is consistent with the findings of other research investigating expertise effects. For example, Simon and Chase (1973) found that chess experts were much better than novices at memorizing the locations of pieces on a chess board, but they were only better as long as the pieces were placed in a viable in-game configuration rather than placed randomly. Similarly, this present study found that music expertise only

8 32 Psychology of Music 44(1) Table 4. Regressions of music expertise, creation of music, and interaction of music expertise and creation of music as predictors of originality on Guilford s (1967) alternative uses task. Predictor variable Music item originality Non-music item originality B(β) SE B(β) SE Music expertise.083(.225) (.138).080 Creation of Music.419(.167) (.271).639 Interaction.111(.342)** (.094).060 Total R F ** 4.379** N Note. All predictors were entered simultaneously for both models. *p <.05; **p < Mean number of uses Low creation of music High creation of music 0 Low High Musical experience score Figure 1. Interaction of music expertise and creation of music for music item fluency. The two lines represent mean number of uses generated by participants who had low and high participation in the creation of music, and increasing music expertise from no musical experience on the left to expert level of musical experience on the right. affected the ability to come up with creative uses of music items, items that music experts use regularly. However, these findings are inconsistent with Hamann et al. (1990) who found greater overall creativity scores using Guilford s Unusual Consequences Test for music majors than non-music majors. The Unusual Consequences Test asks participants to list as many results that would be associated with people no longer needing or wanting to sleep. These differences in results across these studies may indicate a need to look more closely at the various cognitive processes involved in the different creativity tasks. The finding that expert musicians who create music have increased divergent thinking compared to novices and non-musicians, while expert musicians who simply play music display a slight decrease in divergent thinking in comparison to novice and non-musicians, is

9 Sovansky et al Mean number of categories Low High Musical experience score Low creation of music High creation of music Figure 2. Interaction of music expertise and creation of music for music item flexibility. The two lines represent mean number of categories of uses generated by participants who had low and high participation in the creation of music, and increasing music expertise from no musical experience on the left to expert level of musical experience on the right. 6 Mean originality of uses Low creation of music High creation of music 0 Low High Musical experience score Figure 3. Interaction of music expertise and creation of music for music item originality. The two lines represent mean originality score of participants who had low and high participation in the creation of music, and increasing music expertise from no musical experience on the left to expert level of musical experience on the right. particularly intriguing. One possible explanation for these findings is that music experts who create music did not become fixated, whereas expert musicians who simply play music did, much like the baseball experts seen in Wiley s (1998) study. In Wiley s (1998) study, baseball experts were much more likely to be fixated or stuck on baseball than novices. In our study, music experts that do not create music appear to be limited by their expertise, similar to Wiley s (1998) research showing that experts are more fixated than novices. However, in our study the

10 34 Psychology of Music 44(1) experts who created music showed increased divergent thinking similar to research by Gibson et al. (2009) and Hamann et al. (1990) showing that trained musicians are more creative compared to non-musicians. This means that even within the same domain some experts appear to be hindered by their expertise, experiencing more fixation, while other experts appear to be helped by their expertise, experiencing less fixation and showing more creativity. Based on this interaction of music expertise and the creation of music, it appears that the activities that a person practices within their domain of expertise are the key factors that influence creativity. This finding further supports Koutsoupidou and Hargreaves (2009) finding that musical exploration enhances creativity in music. Future directions This study found that within one domain (i.e., music) some experts have increased divergent thinking, while others do not. This raises the question of how the experiences of an expert in other domains (such as golf or chess) would affect creativity. There may be some domains, especially more procedural domains, where expertise leads to decreased creativity, while domains that are considered more creative, such as painting, may lead to the same sort of increase in creativity that was found in musicians who arrange, compose and improvise. It is also worth exploring the possibility that there may be other domains where, like musicians, some experts will experience decreased creativity while other experts show increases. If these other domains exist, it would be valuable to discover which practices in those domains lead to some experts having increased creativity and some having decreased. This study focused on the relationship between music expertise, creation, and a purely divergent thinking task. Future studies may want to consider the relationship between music expertise and other measures of creativity such as the Remote Associates Task (RAT) (Mednick, 1962), which measures convergent thinking. Additionally, as outlined in the introduction, future studies should also be designed to focus on assessing the relationship between individuals high on Big-C and their levels of expertise and creation. Implications The finding that expert musicians who actively create music have higher divergent thinking than expert musicians who simply play music may have implications for music education. For example, classically trained musicians are often trained to have high proficiency in playing an instrument, but may rarely create original music. These findings suggest that this type of musician would not experience increases in divergent thinking with expertise, and may even have slightly decreased divergent thinking compared to non-experts. In contrast, the types of musicians who will experience the beneficial outcome of increased divergent thinking with expertise are composers, jazz musicians who often improvise, and musicians who arrange another artist s music into something new. Based on these findings, if a musician wants to have higher divergent thinking, they should incorporate the creation of music into their regular musical practice routine. Similarly, if music educators want all musicians in their program to be more creative, higher importance should be placed on teaching all students to arrange, compose, and improvise music, not just jazz and composition students. Expanding more creative practices to all musicians would also be in accordance with the National Standards for Music Education, set forth by the National Association for Music Education (NAfME). One of the nine standards proposed by NAfME is focused directly on the creation of music through improvisation and composition ( The results of this study therefore lend empirical support to the already held

11 Sovansky et al. 35 belief by many that it is an important component to a complete and comprehensive education in music. As suggested by Koutsoupidou and Hargreaves (2009), Teachers should create a rich musical environment with many opportunities and stimuli for making music (p. 268). Music students should be taught creation of music on a practical rather than theoretical level, so that students are taught how to make creation of music become an integral part of daily practice. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Megan Wickens for help with this project. Part of this research was presented at the 25th Annual Convention of the Association for Psychological Science, Washington, DC (May, 2013). Ethical approval Ethical approval for this project was given by the Institutional Review Board at Albion College [ref number S12-09]. Funding This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-forprofit sectors. References Aiken, L. S., & West, S. G. (1991). Multiple regression: Testing and interpreting interactions. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE. Bédard, J., & Chi, M. T. H. (1992). Expertise. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 1, Beilock, S. L. (2010). Choke: What the secrets of the brain reveal about getting it right when you have to. New York, NY: Free Press. Beilock, S. L., & Carr, T. H. (2001). On the fragility of skilled performance: What governs choking under pressure? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130(4), Chase, W. G., & Simon, H. A. (1973). Perception in chess. Cognitive Psychology, 4, Csíkszentmihályi, M. (1996). Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. New York, NY: Harper Collins. Dartnall, T. (2002). Creativity, cognition, and knowledge: An interaction. West Port, CT: Praeger Publishers. de Groot, A. D. (1965). Thought and choice in chess. The Hague, The Netherlands: Mouton. Ericsson, K. A., & Charness, N. (1994). Expert performance: In structure and acquisition. American Psychologist, 49(8), Gibson, C., Folley, B. S., & Park, S. (2009). Enhanced divergent thinking and creativity in musicians: A behavioral and near-infrared spectroscopy study. Brain and Cognition, 69, Guilford, J. P. (1967). The nature of human intelligence. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Hamann, D. L., Bourassa, R., & Aderman, M. (1990). Creativity and the arts. Dialogue in Instrumental Music Education, 14(2), Hennessey, B. A., & Amabile, T. M. (1988). Storytelling as a means of assessing creativity. Journal of Creative Behavior, 22, Koutsoupidou, T., & Hargreaves, D. J. (2009). An experimental study of the effects of improvisation on the development of children s creative thinking in music. Psychology of Music, 37(3), Levitin, D. J. (2006). This is your brain on music: The science of a human obsession. New York, NY: Dutton. Limb, C. J., & Braun, A. R. (2008). Neural substrates of spontaneous musical performance: An fmri Study of Jazz Improvisation. PLoS ONE 3(2): e1679. doi: /journal.pone Mednick, S. A. (1962). The associative basis of the creative process. Psychological Review, 69(3), National Association for Music Education. (n.d.). National standards for music education. Retrieved from

12 36 Psychology of Music 44(1) Perkins, D. N. (1981). The mind s best work. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Simonton, D. K. (1997). Creative productivity: A predictive and explanatory model of career trajectories and landmarks. Psychological Review, 104(1), doi: / X Torrance, E. P. (1988). The nature of creativity as manifest in its testing. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), The nature of creativity: Contemporary psychological perspectives (pp ). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Webster, P. (1987). Refinement of a measure of creative thinking in music. In C. K. Madsen & C. A. Prickett (Eds.), Applications of research in music behaviour (pp ). Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press. Webster, P. (1994). Measure of creative thinking in music (MCTM-II) administrative guidelines. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Wiley, J. (1998). Expertise as mental set: The effects of domain knowledge in creative problem solving. Memory & Cognition, 26, Appendix Alternative uses task items Please note each item was shown on a separate page Music items: Non-music items: What is the name of this item? On the 1 through 7 scale below please rate how familiar you are with this item? Not Familiar At All Very Familiar Have you ever used an item like this? YES NO In the space below list as many creative uses as you can think of for this item: