A Study of Young Artists: The Development of Artistic Talent and Creativity

ABSTRACT: This study explored the development of talent and creativity in a population of 60 children (kindergarten through 5th grade) enrolled in a private art-enrichment program. The population of highly motivated and highly reinforced children offered an opportunity to explore the relations among the following hypothesized components of creativity: motivation, knowledge, problem finding, ideation, evaluation, age, and context. The children were videotaped while they created solutions to 2 artistic and 3 puzzle-like activities; the observed behavior provided scores on problem finding, evaluation, and ideation. In addition, 3 artists scored the 2 drawing tasks on knowledge and ideation. Age was correlated significantly with knowledge in both drawing situations, but the relations between age and problem finding, ideation, and evaluation depended on the variable used, the problem situation, or both. In one drawing situation, controlling for technical expertise resulted in a curvilinear relation between novelty and age. The pattern of relationships among the components also differed with the drawing situation. The context, or problem situation, also interacted with the contributions of age, evaluation, and problem finding in the prediction of novelty. Multiple linear regressions of assessments of knowledge and ideation on the assessed novelty of both drawings revealed the significance of expressivity and composition in predicting novelty. The findings are discussed within the context of a developmental theory.     

Judged Likelihood of Different Second Crimes: A Function of Judged Similarity

Numerous studies have concluded that the judged probability of conviction for a crime is higher when information concerning a prior conviction is disclosed. This is even more true when the prior and present crimes are the same. This paper examines the argument that the influence of a hypothetical previous conviction on the judgment of predilection toward a hypothetical present crime is a continuous function of the degree of similarity between past and present crimes. The subjects were presented with all possible pairs of 10 crimes, the first being considered as a prior conviction and the second as a presently charged crime. The subjects judged the subjective likelihood that a person convicted of the first crime (C1) would, in fact, he of a mind and inclination to commit the second one (C2). Independent judgments of intercrime, undefined similarity also were obtained. The main experimental findings, as expected, were that the judged probability of C2. given C1, was: (a) greatest when C2 was a repeat of C1; (b) uniquely different for each C1; (c) predicted quite well by degree of intercrime similarity; (d) poorly predicted by crime seriousness values. Thus, the subject appears to make judgments of predilection on the basis of simple representativeness heuristics, which specify that certain crimes will be considered more likely if they are more semantically related to earlier ones. Such a mental device unfortunately would he systematically biased in courtroom settings because judgments of intercrime similarity are not influenced by real-world probabilities.     

A Critique of Six Measures for Assessing Creativity

Tests and measures of creativity are critical instruments guiding educators in identifying highly productive individuals capable of contributing insightful and far reaching solutionsto ourproblem ridden civilization. This paperanalyzesand critiques six popularlyused measures ofcreativity: 1) The Torrance Test of Creative Thinking by E. Paul Torrance (1966); 2) The Creativity Assessment Packet by frank Williams (1980); three subtests of divergent production of the 3) Structure ofthe Intellect Learning Abilities Test by Mary Meeker; 4) Thinking Creatively With Sounds and Words by E. Paul Torrance, Joe Khatena and Bert F. Cunnington (1973); 5) Thinking Creatively In Action and Movement by E. Paul Torrance (1981); 6) Khatena-Torrance Creative Perception Inventory by Joe Khatena & E. Paul Torrance (1976). Reviewed through personal observation and published literature, these tests reveal a capacity as partial measures of divergent and productive thinking. Findings indicate that updating and upgrading of several tests with thought toward key constituent factors of the creative process would be qualitatively beneficial to test design. Harnessing creative potential is a main concern of educators hoping to prepare America's youth for a fast paced and rapidly changing existence. The questions at the heart of this concern: what creativity is, what constitutes creative thinking, and what the creative individual is like, have given birth to many tests and biographical checklists. Understanding the dimensions ofcreativity is difficult at best, and assessing it through tests or biographical checklists is even more problematic. Through direct examination and a review ofthe literature, this paper critiques six such measures for validity, reliability and utility. Those measures included: the Creativity Assessment Packet (CAP), the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TICT), Thinking Creatively in Action and Movement, Thinking Creatively with Sound and Words, Khatena-Torrance Creative Perception Inventory, and three divergent thinking subtests ofthe Structure of Intellect Learning Abilities Test (SOl-LA).     

A Religious Interpretation of Emergence: Creativity as God

Thinking of God today as creativity (instead of as The Creator) enables us to bring theological values and meanings into significant connection with modern cosmological and evolutionary thinking. This conception connects our understanding of God with today's ideas of the Big Bang; cosmic and biological evolution; the evolutionary emergence of novel complex realities from simpler realities, and the irreducibility of these complex realities to their simpler origins; and so on. It eliminates anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism from the conception of God, thus overcoming one of the major reasons for the implausibility of God-talk in today's world—here viewed as a highly dynamic reality (not an essentially stable structure), with God regarded as the ongoing creativity in this world. This mystery of creativity—God—manifest throughout the universe is quite awe-inspiring, calling forth emotions of gratitude, love, peace, fear, and hope, and a sense of the profound meaningfulness of human existence in the world—issues with which faith in God usually has been associated. It is appropriate, therefore, to think of God today as precisely this magnificent panorama of creativity with which our universe and our lives confront us.     

Controllable Oddness as a Resource in Creativity

Religion, although often a powerful source of comfort, can also become a source of sadness, stress, or confusion in people's lives. Given the many demonstrated links between religiosity and well-being, some people may turn to religion with the primary aim of seeing how religion might help or profit them. Granted, religious belief and involvement can provide many benefits, including social support, a sense of meaning, purpose, and direction for one's life, an environment that fosters the development of virtue, and perhaps even a close, personal relationship with God. However, problems can arise in any of these areas, creating stumbling blocks that can create personal distress and weaken religious interest or commitment. This article considers four major stumbling blocks associated with religion: interpersonal strains, negative attitudes toward God, inner struggles to believe, and problems associated with virtuous striving.     

Filtering Theories of Truth: Compositionality as a Criterion

The traditional way to filter out the implausible candidate solutions to the semantic paradoxes is to appeal to the so-called “cost/benefit analyses.” Yet it is often tedious and controversial to carry out such analyses in detail. Facing this, it would be helpful for us to rely upon some principles to filter out at least something, if not everything, from them. The proposal in this paper is thereby rather simple: We may use principles of compositionality as a “filter” for this purpose. The paper has four sections. In Section 2, the author uses the filter to examine Kripke’s fixed-point theory and to thereby show how it works. In Section 3, the author gives more examples from the classical theories of truth to demonstrate the power of the filter. In Section 4, the author addresses the skepticism concerning whether there is any consistent or non-trivial theory of truth that can survive this filtering procedure. A “nearly sufficient” condition for a theory of truth to survive this test is discussed in order to show that at least some consistent or non-trivial theories of truth do indeed survive the filtering procedure.     

Privileged Communication in Selected Helping Professions: A Comparison Among Statutes

The authors present findings of an examination and assessment of existing privileged communication statutes and rules of evidence in the 50 states and the District of Columbia for clients of selected helping professionals: psychologists, social workers, marriage and family therapists or counselors, school counselors, and licensed professional counselors. Data are reported regarding the extent to which each of these professional groups has succeeded in establishing that their clients' communications with them are entitled to legal privilege, the scope of privilege extended, and specified exceptions to privilege. The report concludes with implications and suggested guidelines for practice.     

A Comparison of Assessment Methods and Raters in Product Creativity

Although previous studies have attempted to use different experiences of raters to rate product creativity by adopting the Consensus Assessment Method (CAT) approach, the validity of replacing CAT with another measurement tool has not been adequately tested. This study aimed to compare raters with different levels of experience (expert ves. nonexpert raters) using both CAT and the product creativity measurement instrument (PCMI) to assess the product creativity of 56 design works based on a design competition. The results showed that nonexpert raters who used either CAT or PCMI had higher interreliability than expert raters. Using PCMI was found to result in higher correlation than using CAT for the expert and nonexpert raters, although the correlation between the CAT and PCMI methods was statistically insignificantly different. After regression analysis, the results showed that all PCMI items had higher explanatory power for the creativity scores using CAT and, moreover, the nonexpert raters were found to have higher explanatory power than the expert raters. Based on these results, it is recommended that the use of both nonexpert raters and PCMI is an alternative way of enhancing the flexibility of product creativity assessment.     

Creativity across Cultures: A Comparison between Ugandan and Italian Students

The purpose of this research was to compare the creative performance of students belonging to 2 different cultures, Italian and Ugandan. The participants were 462 children between the ages of 6 and 14 (231 in each group). The children were distributed across the age groups, between the 1st and 7th years of primary school. This study used a quantitative methodology and an intercultural perspective to explore the socio-cultural variables involved in defining and expressing creative action. To evaluate creative performance, Williams’s TCD (Test of Creativity and Divergent Thinking, 1996) was used along with a questionnaire to identify socio-anagraphical characteristics. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed no statistically significant difference between the averaged total scores of the two groups on creativity and divergent thinking tests. However, Ugandan and Italian students had statistically significant differences in the flexibility (FS) category, with Italian students earning higher scores than the Ugandan students, and also in fluency (FL), where the Ugandan children achieved higher scores than the Italian ones.     

Visual Creativity Across Cultures: A Comparison Between Italians and Japanese

Culture-related differences in visual creativity were investigated, comparing Italian and Japanese participants in terms of divergent (figural completion task) and product-oriented thinking (figural combination task). Visual restructuring ability was measured as the ability to reinterpret ambiguous figures and was included as a covariate. Results showed that in divergent thinking, Italians only outperformed Japanese participants in elaboration and in product-oriented thinking in terms of originality of products. Visual restructuring ability was found to play a key role both in originality and practicality of products. Both groups scored the same in terms of fluency, originality, and flexibility of visual divergent thinking, as well as in term of practicality of creative products. These findings are consistent with the idea that Italians and Japanese have the same creative potential, although from the early stages of the design Japanese seem to show a greater tendency to take practicality constraints into account when creating in the visual domain.     

Mistakes as Pathways Towards Creativity in Counseling: A Case Example

ABSTRACT

The relationship between mistakes, improvisation, and counseling process is explored through the use of a case example involving a failed clinical intervention. Exploration of mistakes offers an opportunity to examine multiple elements of counseling while highlighting the creative nature of the counseling process. Counselor educators are encouraged to incorporate discussions of mistakes and creative development into training.     

Targeting Co-Sleeping in Children With Anxiety Disorders Using a Modified Bedtime Pass Intervention: A Case Series Using a Changing Criterion Design

Children with anxiety disorders experience high rates of sleep-related problems, with co-sleeping and resistance to sleeping independently being among the more frequent problems reported. Although extinction-based behavioral sleep interventions have repeatedly been shown to be highly effective for treating bedtime resistance, the primary obstacle to their implementation is parent discomfort with these procedures. The bedtime pass intervention was developed to minimize extinction bursts when implementing extinction procedures for childhood sleep problems. Several studies have found this intervention to be effective for treating bedtime resistance behaviors, but not co-sleeping specifically, in nonclinical samples of children. The current paper describes the use of a modified bedtime pass procedure to target problematic co-sleeping and related bedtime resistance behaviors in two children with anxiety disorders who presented for treatment at an outpatient pediatric anxiety specialty clinic. A changing criterion, single subject methodology was used to evaluate the effectiveness of this procedure. Data indicate that both children were able to transition from co-sleeping with parents every night, to sleeping independently, with relatively limited need for contact with parents at night during the intervention. These findings extend the data for the bedtime pass procedure to both co-sleeping and children with anxiety disorders. Clinical implications of these findings are discussed given the limited guidance for treating comorbid sleep problems in anxious children. Strengths and limitations of the data being drawn from a clinical treatment setting are also discussed.     

Queering Black Homophobia: Black Theology as a Sexual Discourse of Transformation

Abstract

This article explores black homophobia as a co-constitutive phenomenon which harbors the fear of the loss of a black archetypal identity that can be understood as (hetero)normative. Using a method of queering black homophobia from a hetero non-normative viewpoint, an exploration of the authenticity of a liberation viewpoint that is multivocal, multidimensional, and offering an interpretation that is inclusive of identities that trouble the waters of black hetero-patriarchal hegemony will be in question as it relates to the role of the Hamitic hypothesis and those interpretations that conflate evil, sexual perversion, and human degeneration within blackness.     

Opening the Black Box: Using Process Evaluation Measures to Assess Implementation and Theory Building

The past decade has seen increasing recognition in prevention science of the need to move away from a black box approach to intervention evaluation and toward an approach that can elaborate on the mechanisms through which changes in the outcomes operate (Chen & Rossi, 1989; Durlak & Wells, 1997; Spoth et al., 1995). An approach that examines issues of program implementation is particularly critical in the design of efficacy studies of school-based preventive interventions. Numerous preventive intervention strategies are now delivered within the schools, often by regular classroom teachers. The extent to which teachers faithfully deliver a particular curriculum or incorporate instructional strategies emphasized by an intervention is a critical question for the overall project evaluation. This article illustrates the utilization of process measures from a multicomponent school-based prevention program to examine implementation of a teaching staff development intervention, and the program's underlying theoretical basis. Given the nested study design, the analyses utilize hierarchical linear models (Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992) to examine changes in teaching strategies by condition and investigate the hypothesized relationships between teaching practices and student behaviors based on the program's theoretical framework. Results suggest that teaching practices in two of the six intervention focus areas were positively impacted in the first 18 months of the project. Findings also support th relationships between teachers' instructional practices and students' behaviour.