CogNovo fellows Ilaria Torre and Frank Loesche have published an article in the special issue of the journal "Creativity. Theories-Research-Applications", dedicated to creativity and social interactions.
The collaborative paper, entitled "Overcoming Impasses in Conversations: A Creative Business", brings forward another instance of the close connection between the domains of language and creativity, by examining the phenomenon of impasses in conversation. Impasses are loosely defined as a situation where "one does not know how to proceed". In the context of conversation, a point in time when none of the interlocutors is speaking can be considered an impasse. Using methodology from Conversation Analysis (CA), Ilaria and Frank argue that overcoming these impasses can be explained with similar processes known in Creative Problem Solving.
This paper is a fine example of successful interdisciplinary collaboration: Frank is interested in the processes involved in Creative Problem Solving and Ilaria, inherently interested in language and, in particular, in trust attributions to voices, is trained in CA.