The ability of the individual to produce ideas expressed in language or other media is an important human characteristic. In this chapter, we consider a variety of factors that measure different aspects of such an ability. Many of these factors may be roughly described as “fluency” and “creativity” factors. These correspond generally to abilities that Guilford (1967) described as concerned with “divergent production,” that is, with tasks in which the requirements are relatively unstructured and in which the individual must produce a variety of responses that might meet such requirements. Divergent production is regarded as being opposed to “convergent production,” where the task is highly structured and the problem is only to produce a single “correct” or “best” answer. Some of the factors discussed in the present chapter are of a divergent character, but others are of a convergent character.

In describing this domain as one of idea production, I mean the term idea to be taken in its broadest possible sense. An idea can be expressed in a word, a phrase, a sentence, or indeed any verbal proposition, but it may be something expressed in a gesture, a figure, a drawing, or a particular action. It might be a musical phrase or composition, although there are no instances in our datasets where individuals are asked to produce musical materials.