This chapter explores the implications of the notions of artistic thought states/processes and aspectual creativity for empirical research in the psychology and neuroscience of creativity. It locates the place of the human ability for creative ideation within the wider framework of the plasticity and productivity of the human mind, which became the focus of theoretical attention thanks to recent work in psycholinguistics, lexical pragmatics and cognitive psychology. Drawing on Chomsky’s view of constraint-governed productivity/ plasticity and recent lexical-pragmatic evidence about the flexible relation between lexically encoded and communicated concepts, my analysis introduces a crucial distinction between various species-specific types of linguistic and cognitive productivity/ plasticity, on the one hand, and full-blown creativity, on the other. The chapter then brings my notions of artistic thought states/processes and aspectual creativity into contact with current research in innateness, giftedness and talent in order to challenge fundamental assumptions in the psychology and neuroscience of creativity, such as the distinction between ‘artistic’ and ‘scientific’ creativity, and the currently dominant ‘domain-specific model’ of creativity (e.g. verbal creativity, musical creativity, kinaesthetic creativity etc). My discussion has fruitful implications for current empirical studies of ‘verbal creativity’ and ‘literary creativity’, sketching new directions for future research.