Contributions of Episodic & Semantic Memory to the Creative Process

Abstract

Creative ideation draws upon past knowledge and experiences to construct novel ideas. Theories of creativity have long emphasized the role of semantic memory, though recent work has also highlighted the importance of episodic memory processes that support the retrieval and recombination of specific experiences. This dissertation investigates how semantic and episodic memory contribute to the creative process across both generative and evaluative phases. Project 1 applies natural language processing (NLP) to analyze creative short stories produced by both humans and large language models. Results indicate that semantic diversity and perceptual details jointly predict subjective creativity ratings, with human and AI-generated stories showing comparable creative quality. Project 2 examines the role of episodic retrieval and simulation in evaluating the novelty and effectiveness of ideas. NLP analyses of evaluative statements reveal that judgments of highly novel ideas are characterized by future-focused language and perceptual detail, suggesting that episodic simulation supports the assessment of creativity by enabling evaluators to imagine potential outcomes. Project 3 extends these findings to a real-world context, showing that linguistic concreteness in entrepreneurial pitches predicts perceived impact, highlighting how concrete language may reduce psychological distance and facilitate the evaluation of entrepreneurial ventures. Together, these projects provide converging evidence for distinct yet complementary roles of episodic and semantic memory in creative cognition, offering tools for creativity assessment and strategies to improve how ideas are communicated.