A Model of Creative Understanding

Although creativity has largely been studied in problem solving contexts, creativity consists of both a generative component and a comprehension component. In particular, creativity is an essential part of reading and understanding of natural language stories. We have formalized the understanding process and have developed an algorithm capable of producing creative understanding behavior. We have also created a novel knowledge organization scheme to assist the process. Our model of creativity is implemented as a portion of the ISAAC (Integrated Story Analysis And Creativity) reading system, a system which models the creative reading of science fiction stories.