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

Immersive 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.