In a longitudinal study, 240 undergraduate dance students were recruited to assess the
effectiveness of a series of workshops designed to develop metacognitive skills in use of
mental imagery to support choreographic creativity. The workshops were based upon a
theoretical model of mental representations and cognition. The students also completed a
creativity test before the workshops, and a newly designed test of flexible thinking before and
after the workshops, and a year later. Five forms of the flexible thinking test were created to
allow for repeated administration over time, and the forms were shown to be equivalent and
to correlate with the creativity test. Students who had taken part in the imagery workshops
showed a greater improvement in flexible thinking a year after the training, compared to the
scores of students who had not received the training. Evaluations of choreographic
assessments by the students’ teachers were rated for positive and negative mentions of
imagery and creativity, and the control group scored higher than the imagery group on use of
imagery immediately after the training, but lower than the imagery group on both creativity
and use of imagery four months after the workshop. The findings provide some support for
the idea that domain-specific creativity can be enhanced through developing skills in the use
of mental imagery to produce novel ideas, and that this also improves domain-general
flexible thinking.