Measuring creativity process and product with a digitized Invented Alien Creatures Task
Franco-Martínez, A., Garre-Frutos, F., & Tomás, G.
PsyArXivPreprint
Abstract
Creativity research has traditionally relied on final creation products while paying much less attention to the processes through which those products emerge. At the same time, some classical creativity tasks, such as the Invented Alien Creatures (IAC) task, have been implemented heterogeneously across studies, limiting comparability and potentially contributing to current concerns about methodological credibility and replicability. In this paper, we introduce a digitized version of the IAC task, the dIAC, designed to address both issues. The dIAC includes an open-source jsPsych drawing interface, the Creative Creature Creator (CrCrCr), which allows participants to invent creatures using freehand brushes and editable predefined stickers, while automatically recording all their actions throughout the creative process. The dIAC preserves conventional product-based assessment, such as consensual ratings and anatomical invariants, while also generating fine-grained digital indicators of both creative product and process (e.g., flexibility, elaboration, revision behavior, drawing phases times) and detailed time-stamped action logs (e.g., generate, move, transform, eliminate...). To illustrate the measurement potential of the dIAC and refine its workflow, we conducted a pilot study. Although the current sample was not intended for confirmatory inference, we could explore that external ratings showed high interrater agreement in dimensions such as unusualness and overall creativity, and several digitally-derived indicators appeared promising as correlates of rated creativity such as the flexibility, elaboration, or drawing time. Readers are invited to create their own creatures and check their outputs with our current demo of the creator, publicly available at demoCrCrCr.github.io. By combining fine-grained process data with an openly accessible and standardized implementation of a classic task, the dIAC aims to support a more cumulative, transparent, and methodologically rigorous line of research on creativity.