STRUCTURED IMAGINATION IN STORY CREATION

Studies on structural imagination show that imaginative thinking is gu ided by conceptual knowledge structures. The two present studies explo red the role of structured imagination in story creation. In Study 1, it was predicted that variations in the representational knowledge of abstract concepts would influence whether or not stories are meaningfu l and original to readers. In addition, it was predicted that meaningf ul and original stories would be more likely to express abstract conce pts than nonmeaningful and nonoriginal stories. In Study 2, it was pre dicted that stories evaluated as meaningful/original, meaningful/nonor iginal, or nonmeaningful/nonoriginal would be related to the qualities of meaning/nonmeaning and originality/nonoriginality of the image des criptions used to write them. Chi-square analyses and percentage diffe rences showed support for representational knowledge as an important i nfluence on story meaning and originality, and that meaningful and ori ginal stories were more likely to contain abstract concepts than nonme aningful and nonoriginal stories, In addition, significant correlation s were found between the creating of meaningful versus nonmeaningful s tories and the: use of meaningful versus nonmeaningful knowledge pools . However, significance was not Found far the originality/nonoriginali ty dimension.