Artistic creation as stimulated by superimposed versus separated visual images.

An experiment was performed to examine the role of homospatial thinking in visual art. Each of 43 university-level art students produced three drawing stimulated by pairs of slides. Subjects were randomly assigned to view the pairs either superimposed on one another or separated on the screen. Drawings were independently judged by two internationally noted artists. As predicted, drawings containing an element from each component image intermingled were higher in creative potential when stimulated by the superimposed presentation; however, when sketches from either condition did not clearly contain images from both slides, the separated image presentation yielded the more creative result. Although results favor the hypothesis in part, the overall ambiguity of the data illustrates some of the difficulties in studying creative thought processes under experimental conditions.