Creativity with 6 Degrees of Freedom: Feasibility Study of Visual Creativity Assessment in Virtual Reality

ABSTRACTABSTRACTImmersive virtual reality (IVR) takes advantage of exponential growth in our technological abilities to offer an array of new forms of entertainment, learning opportunities, and even psychological interventions and assessments. The field of creativity is a driving force in both large-scale innovations and everyday progress, and imbedding creativity assessment in IVR programs has important practical implications for future research and interventions in this field. Creativity assessment, however, tends to either rely on traditional concepts or newer, yet cumbersome methods. Can creativity be measured within IVR? This study introduces the VIVA, a new IVR-based visual arts creativity assessment paradigm in which user create 3D drawings in response to a prompt. Productions are then rated with modern extensions of a classic product-based approach to creativity assessment. A sample of 67 adults completed the VIVA, further scored using item-response modeling. Results demonstrated the strong psychometric properties of the VIVA assessment, including its structural validity, internal reliability, and criterion validity with relevant criterion measures. Together, this study established a solid proof-of-concept of the feasibility of measuring creativity in IVR. We conclude by discussing directions for future studies and the broader importance and impact of this line of work for the field of creativity and virtual reality. AcknowledgmentsThe preparation of this article was supported by grant RFP-15-05 to Baptiste Barbot from the Imagination Institute (www.imagination-institute.org), funded by the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the Imagination Institute or the John Templeton Foundation. We thank Alexandra Blanchard, Brianna Heuser, Rosemary Leo, Catalina Mourgues, Danielle Saliani, and Mansi Shah for help with data collection.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Availability of data and materialAvailable from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.Additional informationFundingThe preparation of this article was supported by grant RFP-15-05 to Baptiste Barbot from the Imagination Institute (www.imagination-institute.org), funded by the John Templeton Foundation.