CONTRIBUTIONS OF BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS AND RELATIONAL FRAME THEORY TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF CREATIVITY IN CREATIVE WRITING CONTEXTS: a scope review

This scoping review aims to explore how Experimental Behavior Analysis and Relational Frame Theory (RFT) conceptualize creativity in the context of creative writing, given the growing relevance of understanding creative processes across multiple domains. While creativity is conventionally defined by originality and contextual relevance, there is still limited research within Behavior Analysis on this topic, possibly due to low dissemination of existing work or underrecognition of the theoretical framework’s explanatory potential. Grounded in the assumption that creative behavior follows the same principles as other behaviors, the review focuses on verbal creativity—specifically, the flexible and non-usual modulation of language. By mapping the current scientific literature, the study seeks to identify how RFT and verbal behavior approaches account for creative textual production, while also considering research from other creative contexts as potential methodological models. Given the exploratory nature of the review and the expectation of limited context-specific studies, the analysis will incorporate parallel experimental designs and qualitatively assess publication bias, methodological quality, and thematic patterns across studies.