Visualization of n-gram input patterns for evaluating the level of divergent thinking

Abstract

Creative thinking is often considered to be difficult, one reason because humans tend to be trapped in the same patterns of thinking and cannot easily come up with a totally new combination of concepts. In other words, humans are not talented at evenly exploring combinatorial space. In order to visualize how strong this tendency is, we implemented a system that asks the subject to type in a long sequence of numbers. The system then counts the frequency of the appearance of the same subsequences using n-grams. We called it “the Creativity Test.” It measures one’s efficiency of exploring a wider part of a combinatorial space without being caught in few patterns. The result is assumed to be related to the ability of divergent thinking, which is considered to be important in creative thinking. When we tested the system on a group of subjects, we discovered that, for most of them, surprisingly long n-grams appeared frequently, making the subjects realize how inefficient they were at coming up with new combinations.