youre baking a pumpkin pie on thanksgiving morning suddenly you realize you forgot to buy one very important ingredient canned pumpkin all the grocery stores within reasonable driving distance are closed you've got a problem that requires creative problem-solving steven smith a college of arts and sciences professor at texas a&m university who researches memory metacognition and creative cognition in the department of psychological and brain sciences leads the field in studying creativity and creative problem-solving some of his findings would likely come to light during our hypothetical thanksgiving scenario creative problem-solving is one type of creative activity and its a really common one that takes a lot of forms smith explained my background is in human memory i really study forgetting and im really an expert at that i also study something like forgetting in creative thinking and creative problem-solving for me its just an extension the memory and creativity part of it are pretty much the same melons memories & motivations smith uses empirical science in his research he creates opportunities to study creative cognition by observing people working through problems in one experiment smith observed people solving word fragments to determine if blocks in the creative problem-solving process can be caused by implicit memory which includes experiences culture ideas and skills that an individual has but is not consciously aware of smiths experiment was inspired by a similar empirical science experiment while the original experiment concluded that implicit knowledge can help solve problems smiths experiment expanded on those findings to determine that implicit knowledge can also put a creative block between problem-solvers and a solution in our thanksgiving pie scenario your implicit knowledge could remind you that canned pumpkin is made from fresh pumpkin like the ones in your decorative centerpiece that you could repurpose in that case implicit knowledge helped you solve the problem however if your implicit knowledge of pumpkin pie was that only canned pumpkin is acceptable you might waste time looking in your pantry for another can before admitting defeat here the word canned is blocking you from looking at the problem creatively pie-votal moments in creative cognition smith is also interested in the connection between creative cognition and memory one of the reasons i study creative cognition is because im interested in what creative cognition has to do with creativity itself smith shared im interested in a lot of different things but theres kind of this big question: how does stuff come to mind you didnt know about it one second; now you know about it whats going on there smith applies methods of memory and forgetting to creative thinking to study how ideas come to mind his philosophy which he refers to as the creative cognition approach is that all types of cognition can be creative back to our pie scenario: in the case of the word canned blocking your problem-solving you move onto another dish then you suddenly remember a thanksgiving where you were served apple pie instead of pumpkin you begin to tell your guests about how you connected the memory of eating apple pie one thanksgiving to your pumpkin-pie predicament they proceed to tell you that your memory is false; youve never had apple pie at thanksgiving smiths creative cognition approach theory helps explain this phenomenon memory is a cognitive process which means it has the potential to incite creativity for this reason smith refers to false memories as creative memories memory is a cognitive process and the act of remembering can become creative and lead to false recollections