Abstract: Inspired by the process of human creative thinking, cognition evolutionary algorithm, a novel intelligent algorithm based on cognition science and computational creativity, was proposed, which simulates the creative thinking based problem solving process and behaviors. The algorithm is comprised of six components which arc divergent thinking, convergent thinking, memory, execution, learning and value measures. Taking the problem-solving as a knowledge based creative thinking process,knowledge evolution and knowledge based creative thinking skills play important roles in the algorithm. I}he impact of the parameters of cognition evolutionary algorithm on the performance of the algorithm was analyzed through an extended path optimization problem. The results show that the novel algorithm can reduce object score evaluation times compared with other classic intelligent algorithms for solving knowledge intensive optimization problems.

Key words: Cognition evolutionary algorithm, Creative thinking, Problem solving, Computational creativity, Cognitive psychology