The influence of humorous atmosphere on divergent thinking

Two studies investigating the influence of a humorous atmosphere on students' creativity scores are presented. In the first study 78 adolescents were shown humorous film clips and given a task requiring them to write captions for cartoons. A creativity test was subsequently administered to these students and to a control group. In the second study, Form A of the Torrance creativity test (TCT) with standard instructions was given to 130 adolescents. These were then divided into two groups, one experimental and one control. The experimental group was instructed to complete Form B of the TCT with humorous responses, while the control group was instructed to proceed as before. Results of both experiments showed that a humorous atmosphere significantly increases creativity scores. Several explanations for the findings were proposed and the practical applicability of the results in education were stressed.     

An Investigation of The Effects of A Seventh and Eighth Grade Core Program

Abstract

The writer (Ogletree) conducted a creativity study in England, Scotland, and Germany, which included 1,165 primary school children. Results showed that creativity scores (using the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking) were a function of socioeconomic background. In all countries, children of upper class families obtained significantly higher creativity scores (verbal and nonverbal) than children of middle and lower class families. The same significant difference was evident in middle class children to lower class children. This was true when analyzed within countries, by age, grade, and sex. There was no evidence to support the contention that youngsters of lower class backgrounds performed better on nonverbal tasks than their higher class peers, although they did make a better showing on the nonverbal tasks than on the verbal tasks.     

Sex and Cultural Differences in Performance on Certain Verbal Creativity Measures

Abstract

This study Investigated a previously found superiority of girls on Torrance and Barron verbal creativity measures. It was hypothesized that fluency Is the critical factor accounting for the sex differences and, If so, the differences should be apparent In other cultures as well as our own. Performance of pupils in New York State and the Isle of Skye was compared.

The New York results on the Torrance closely parallel those found in previous studies. However, In Skye there are no significant sex differences with the exception of two instances in which hoys are superior. The trend of sex differences on the Barron in Skye Is the same as In previous studies in the United States, although not as in the present American sample.

Cultural factors seem most important, not only for sex differences hut also for significant differences found between performances of pupils in the two countries. It would appear that the Torrance creativity measures employed In this study are culturally hound, as arc many of the traditional intelligence tests.     

Impact of instruction on learning disabled students' creative thinking

Forty-nine pupils from learning disabilities intermediate-level classrooms served as subjects in the study and were randomly assigned to an experimental and control group. The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking were used as pretests and posttests. The Purdue Creative Training Program was used to stimulate the learning disabled experimental group's divergent thinking abilities for 14 weeks. Pupils in the learning disabled experimental group made significantly higher scores than did the comparison group on the creativity variables of the verbal subtest of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking.     

Relationships among creativity,intelligence, and achievement measures in upward bound students

Ninety-four disadvantaged, Upward Bound students were administered a test battery of the Otis Quick-Scoring Mental Ability Test, Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test, Guilford's tests of Expressional Fluency, Alternate Uses, and Consequences; and the Figural Form of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Significant sex differences favoring males were obtained for Otis I J(P < −025), PSAT-Verbal (p <.01), and PSAT-Quantitative (p <.001). Females excelled males on the figural elaboration score from the TTCT (p <.001). White disadvantaged students scored significantly higher than their Indian counterparts on Otis IQ (p <.05) and higher than their black counterparts on the PSAT-Quantitative (p <.01). White students also scored significantly higher than their Indian counterparts on Guilford-Consequences — Obvious (p <.05). A varimax rotation of the correlation matrix resulted in a two-factor solution defined by intelligence-achievement scores and figural creativity. Guilford creativity tests were more closely related to the intelligence-achievement factor, while the Torrance figural creativity test remained a distinct factor. The results are discussed in relation to previous studies of the creativity-intelligence distinction.     

An investigation of the relationship between cognitive tempo and creativity in preschool-age children.

70 preschool-age children were administered a modified version of the Matching Familiar Figures test as well as a modified version of the picture completion task from the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Sex of subject and cognitive tempo were combined factorially with type of creativity measure in a 2 times 2 times 4 repeated-measures design. A significant effect for cognitive tempo was found showing reflective subjects scoring higher than impulsive subjects on each measure of creativity.     

Creativity in a cooperative group setting

This study was to determine whether cooperative small groups would stimulate creativity of fith and sixth grade students more than an individualized learning environment. Student aptitudes for creative and academic work were assessed on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (Verbal Form A), analysis of student created electrical circuit diagrams, and a batteries and bulbs prediction test. A measure of student perceptions was also used to indicate any changes in attitudes toward the science activity and learning environment. A posttest control group design was used with 11 I fifth and sixth grade students. Half of the population worked by themselves, while the other half (experimental) worked in a student-structured environment on the same science activity which involved creating as many different types of electrical circuits from a given set of batteries and bulbs as possible. An overall conclusion is that fifth and sixth grade students working within small cooperative groups can be more creative as measured by a figural creativity test with electrical circuits than students working alone. The implication of this study is that small cooperative groups as well as individualized groups should be used in elementary science classes when creativity is one of the instructional objectives.     

Impact of instruction on behavior disordered and learning disabled students' creative behavior

Ninety-eight pupils from intermediate-level behavior disordered and learning disabled self-contained classrooms served as subjects. The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking were used as pretests and posttests to measure the effect of creativity instruction on the creative thinking skills of the subjects. For 14 weeks the Purdue Creative Thinking Program was used to stimulate the behaviorally disordered (BD) and learning disabled (LD) experimental group's creative behavior. Subjects in the BD and LD experimental group made significantly greater scores than did the control groups on the verbal and figural subtests of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking.     

Initial mental graphemic representation acquisition and later literacy achievement in children with language impairment: a longitudinal study

The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between the ability to quickly acquire initial mental graphemic representations (MGRs) in kindergarten and fourth grade literacy skills in children with typical language (TL) and children with language impairment (LI). The study is a longitudinal extension of a study conducted by Wolter and Apel in which kindergarten children with LI and TL were administered early literacy measures as well as a novel written pseudoword task of MGR learning (spelling and identification of target pseudowords). In the current study (4 years later), the authors administered reading and spelling measures to 37 of the original 45 children (18 children with LI, 19 children with TL). The children with LI performed significantly lower than their peers with TL on all fourth grade literacy measures. For both groups, kindergarten initial MGR acquisition ability significantly related to fourth grade real-word reading and spelling. For the children with LI, kindergarten initial MGR acquisition ability also related to fourth grade pseudoword decoding and reading comprehension. Collectively, the findings suggest that initial MGR learning in kindergarten is an essential skill that may uniquely relate to later literacy abilities.     

Cognitive preferences and creativity: An exploratory study

Cognitive preference, a cognitive style acquired through life and learning experiences and representing a distinct orientation to the processing of information, is related to creativity in this study. Significant correlations were observed between cognitive preference and verbal creativity but not with figural creativity as measured by the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking.     

The role of affective traits in the creative and problem-solving performance of gifted urban children

Problem-solving and creativity measures were administered to 127 gifted New York City school children from grades 4–6, in an attempt to relate these cognitive variables to the affective traits of locus of control, self-esteem, and tolerance of ambiguity. A canonical correlation analysis indicated one significant canonical set (p <.05) in which 46% of the variability in a set of cognitive measures was explained by a set of affective measures. A factor analysis was performed on the creativity and problem-solving tasks, with two factors emerging: Fluency and Rearrangement. Factor scores were used to analyze sex and grade differences. Sex differences on the cognitive tasks were consistent with those reported in the literature. No sex differences were obtained on the affective tasks. Grade 4 students differed significantly from grade 6 students on the Rearrangement factor only. On the affective tasks, grade 4 students differed from both grade 5 and grade 6 students only on tolerance of ambiguity. Results were discussed in terms of the importance of affective personality traits in the creative and problem-solving process.     

Children's creative potential: An empirical study of measurement issues

Relations between measures of creative potential and different scoring methods were examined in 154 French schoolchildren. The Test for Creative Thinking — Drawing Production (TCT-DP), parallel lines task from the Torrance Test for Creative Thinking, and an object-based creative drawing task were used. Factor analysis of TCT-DP subscores showed an originality factor and an appropriateness factor. The relations between these factors, judge's creativity ratings of the same drawings, and statistical originality scores based on the frequency of elements in the drawings were tested by means of a LISREL model. Moreover, TCT-DP scores correlated positively but weakly with performance in the parallel lines task and the object-based drawing task.     

Language-related longitudinal predictors of arithmetic word problem solving: A structural equation modeling approach

We investigated the longitudinal relations between cognitive skills, specifically language-related skills, and word-problem solving in 340 children (6.10–9.02 years). We used structural equation modeling to examine whether word-problem solving, computation skill, working memory, nonverbal reasoning, oral language, and word reading fluency measured at second grade were associated with performance on measures of word-problem solving in fourth grade. Results indicated that prior word-problem solving, computation skill, nonverbal reasoning, and oral language were significantly associated with children’s later word-problem solving. Multi-group modeling suggested that these relations were not significantly different for boys versus girls. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Creativity development in preschoolers: The effects of children’s museum visits and other education environment factors

As one of the potential contextual factors for creativity development, children’s museum has been introduced to China from the western world in recent years, with the aim to offer a new informal educational environment to enhance children’s creativity. Based on experimental data for two groups of 4-year-old preschoolers (218 for the family mode and 202 for the preschool mode) from Beijing with an appropriately one-year long intervention (September 2017 to July 2018), this study examines the effect of regular visits to a children’s museum and other education environmental factors on young children’s creativity measured by Torrance’s Thinking Creatively in Action and Movement (TCAM) test. Results indicate that in terms of family visit, compared to the control group, the intervention that offers 18 times free tickets to visit a children’s museum significantly improved the experiment group’s originality (a sub-measure of creativity) by an additional 34.51 %. A beneficial effect of this intervention was also found in improving children’s fluency from the sample of preschool group visit (46.80 %). In addition, family education environment factors such as public preschool attendance, frequency of visits to science museums, and the degree of parents’ latitude were also found to positively affect creativity. Children’s personal features such as sex and geographic location of the family are also found to be related with children’s creativity.     

An empirical study of industrial engineering and management curriculum reform in fostering students’ creativity

The objective of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of a creativity-fostering program in industrial engineering and management (IE&M) curriculum reform. Fostering creativity in students has become a crucial issue in industrial engineering education. In a survey of previous studies, we found few on IE&M curriculum reform. In particular, no study has dealt directly with fostering students’ creativity. In this study, we propose an IE&M curriculum reform program. The core of this program is intended to enhance students’ creative problem solving ability. Based on this concept, three required courses were developed: industrial communication, creative problem solving, and scientific research methodology. To investigate the effectiveness of this curriculum reform program, we conducted a two-year follow-up study. One hundred seventy-seven IE&M undergraduates from Yuan-Ze University participated this study, and Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) were used to measure changes in their creativity. The results showed that the students, after completing this reformed curriculum program, had significantly improved their creativity.     

A Comparison of Summer School and Regular Session Achievement in Eleventh Grade American History

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the possible relationships between improvement in group counseling and changes in assessed creativity. It was hypothesized that creativity is positively related to mental health and that subjects who were judged improved after 30 hours of group counseling would also show improvement on variables typically associated with creativity. Thirty-eight subjects who participated in a group counseling experience over a 15-week time span were pre- and posttested on various measures of creativity, and pre- and post-rated on Rogers’ elements of creativity, i.e., (1) Openness to experience; (2) Locus of evaluation; (3) Ability to toy with ideas. At the end of the experimental time the subjects were assigned to either an improved or unimproved category on the basis of therapists’ ratings, outside judgments, and Q adjustment scores. The results indicate that improvement in group psychotherapy correlates significantly with gains in ratings on the more dynamic aspects (creative life style) of creativity. The correlations with the more cognitive measures of creativity were in the predicted direction but not significant. Further research was suggested.     

Torrance Test of Creative Thinking: The question of its construct validity

Some cognitive dimensions are internationally considered by psychologists to describe and to assess creativity. For example, (Guilford, P. (1976). Creatividad y Educación. Buenos Aires. Ed. Paidos) and (Torrance, E. P. (1977). Discovery and nurturance of giftedness in the culturally different. Reston, VA: Council on Exceptional Children) suggested fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration are the main cognitive processes used to define and assess creativity. However, data from several empirical studies did not confirm a factor structure in accordance with such cognitive functions, despite of the wide use of TTCT (Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking) in different countries. In this paper, we present new data collected in Spain and Portugal with TTCT. According to our data, those cognitive functions supposedly present on a subject's performance are not so strong as to explain the variance in scores. Elaboration factors assume some variance explanation, but the main factors are identified with the products in each subtest, suggesting the importance of format, content and demand on TTCT specific tasks. Consequently, we suggest some reflections to amplify the debate concerning the definition of creativity and its evaluation in psychology.     

Correlates of early reading performance in a transparent orthography

A cross-sectional study was conducted with 83first – and 81 fourth graders at the end of theschool year to examine factors accounting forearly reading performance in Finnish, atransparent orthography with a clear mapping ofphonemes onto graphemes. Measures for bothgrades included reading comprehension, phonemeawareness, and object- and digit naming.Additionally measures of skills in morphology,spelling and a screening battery wereadministered to the first graders. The sets ofmeasures accounted for 56% of the variance inreading performance in first grade and 64% infourth grade. Phoneme awareness was stronglyrelated to reading performance and spelling atthe end of first grade, but only forless-skilled readers in fourth grade. Theseresults suggest a larger role for phonemeawareness for children learning a transparentorthography than has been suggested in earlierstudies. At the same time, listeningcomprehension contributed more strongly tofirst-grade reading performance than has beenreported for children learning to readEnglish.     

INTERACTIVE EFFECTS OF CREATIVITY AND IQ ON NINTH-GRADE ACHIEVEMENT

The interactive effects of IQ and creativity upon ninth-grade achievement were examined, with special focus upon the IQ threshold concept of Torrance He hypothesized that achievement is predicted better by IQ than by creativity below the IQ threshold, while IQ validity decreases as creativity validity increases above the threshold. This implies an IQ X Creativity interactive effect on achievement. If an IQ threshold exists, regression weights for IQ X Creativity interactive predictors should be statistically significant when included in multiple regression equations. Three creativity factor scores were estimated and were each multiplied by IQ to define three moderated or interactive predictor variables. A slight though statistically significant increase in validity resulted by adding the moderated variables to IQ and the three factor scores in multiple regression equations. Thus, there was weak support for the existence of an IQ threshold, but the regression of achievement on creativity decreased rather than increased with higher IQ.     

Children's over- and underestimation of academic competence: a longitudinal study of gender differences, depression, and anxiety

A total of 807 third and sixth graders completed questionnaires about their academic competence, feelings of depression, and symptoms of anxiety, every 6 months for 3 years. Teachers provided objective measures of academic competence. Compared to teachers' ratings, boys overestimated and girls underestimated their academic competence. Gender differences first emerged in fourth or fifth grade and increased through eighth grade. Symptoms of depression and anxiety were negatively associated with academic overestimation. Furthermore, controlling for depression and anxiety eliminated most of the gender differences in academic over- and underestimation. Finally, self-reported depression and anxiety predicted changes in the tendency to overestimate academic competence over time. Evidence of the reverse relation was much weaker.