On Berliner's Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Are of Improvisation

In order to characterize divergent thinking, the author performed self-organization feature mapping on the multidimensional data of Williams's (1980) Creative Thinking Tests. The resultant population map of cluster was obtained. Principal-components analysis was also applied to determine the most significant features characterizing divergent thinking. Using the two most significant features to define a 2-dimensional space, the author ascertained characterizations of each cluster over the population map. The results obtained compared favorably with the topological structure of the population map. A secondary differentiation was found in the divergent thinking test. The topological structure for divergent thinking should prove useful for characterization of creative thinking.