Penn State Penn State: College of the Liberal Arts Penn State Penn State: College of the Liberal Arts

Beaty Lab at Penn State

The Cognitive Neuroscience of Creativity Laboratory (CNCL) at Penn State University studies the psychology and neuroscience of creative thinking.

Our lab uses a combination of behavioral, neuroimaging, and computational approaches to investigate the mechanisms underlying human creativity. We create open-access tools for evaluating creative thinking and examine creativity across diverse domains, such as music, science, and education.

Lab News

New Articles in PACA

CNCL grad student Simone Luchini recently published 2 new papers in Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts titled “Automated scoring of creative problem solving with large language models: A comparison of originality and quality ratings” and “Automated assessment of creativity in multilingual narratives”. Check out both papers here and here!

CNCL Grad Student Wins Dissertation Award

Congratulations to Paul DiStefano for winning the Dissertation Award from the Center for Language Science! This award helps support doctoral dissertation research. Way to go Paul!

New Article in Communications Biology

Former postdoc Dr. Qunlin Chen, Dan Zeitlen, and Dr. Beaty recently published a new paper in Communication Biology titled “Dynamic switching between brain networks predicts creative ability”. Check out the paper here!

CNCL Grad Student Wins the Frank X. Barron Award

Congratulations to Simone Luchini for winning the Frank X. Barron award for this year’s Division 10 awards! This award recognizes superior contribution to the psychology of aesthetics, creativity, and the arts. Way to go Simone!

New Papers

New Article in Thinking Skills and Creativity

Paul DiStefano, Dr. Patterson, and Dr. Beaty recently coauthored a new paper in Thinking Skills and Creativity titled “Evaluating Overinclusive Thinking: Development and Validation of the Categorical Overinclusive Thinking Task (COverTT)”. Check out the paper here!

New preprint on ArXiv

Dr. Laverghetta, Simone Luchini, and Dr. Beaty recently put up a preprint on ArXiv titled “The creative psychometric item generator: a framework for item generation and validation using large language models”. Check out the paper here!

New article in Thinking Skills and Creativity

Clin Lai and Dr. Beaty recently coauthored a new paper in Thinking Skills and Creativity titled “Fostering creativity in science education reshapes semantic memory”. Check out the paper here!

New article in Creativity Research Journal

Paul DiStefano, Dr. Patterson, and Dr. Beaty recently coauthored a new paper in Creativity Research Journal titled “Automatic Scoring of Metaphor Creativity with Large Language Models”. Congratulations to Paul on his first first-author publication! Check out the paper here!

New preprint on Research Square

Simone Luchini and Dr. Beaty recently put up a preprint on Research Square titled “Automated Scoring of Open-Ended Question Complexity: A Large Language Model Approach”. Check out the paper here!