Imaginary Worlds in Middle Childhood: A Qualitative Study of Two Pairs of Coordinated Paracosms

Imagining alternatives to actual experiences is an important part of everyday life that can take many forms. One manifestation in middle childhood is the creation of elaborate imaginary worlds, called paracosms. Retrospective reports of adults indicate that having a childhood paracosm is more commonly reported in individuals acknowledged for being highly creative. In this study, we interviewed four children aged 10 to 12 years with interconnected paracosms about the details of their imagined worlds. Our findings indicated that paracosms served as a platform for social activity with friends, a way to explore real world interests (e.g., geography, language), and a vehicle for engaging in creative pursuits (e.g., drawing, storytelling).     

Creativity Research Overlooks the Study of Resilience among Young Children: A Bibliometric Network Review

Creativity researchers are increasingly interested in understanding when, how, and for whom creativity can be beneficial. Previous reviews have demonstrated that creativity research largely ignores the study of its impact on factors that promote health, and well-being among populations of adults. It is unclear, in fact, whether this gap in research also extends to creativity research among young children. This paper addresses this issue. Early childhood is a crucial stage for the cognitive development of young children who remain highly sensitive to stress, and adversity. It is therefore essential to identify and promote factors that are beneficial to early childhood resilience, thereby contributing to documenting more of the effects of creative activities on positive outcomes. This paper presents a review with a bibliometric analysis of 1000 randomly selected articles from the Web of Science, without bias towards any specific peer-reviewed journal. The analysis of 454 included articles shows that approximately 80% of the included studies focus on creativity as an outcome (replicating previous findings with a larger sample), with only 3.78% investigating creative activities as predictors among young children. In this small percentage, most of the studies addressed creative activities in young children related to resilience outcomes.     

Creative Collaboration in Young Children’s Playful Group Drawing

Collaborations that lead to creative outputs occur within different group contexts and with diverse populations, including young children. Two cases of collaborative drawing are presented in this article to consider how young children engage in creative collaboration by negotiating meaning with others through open-ended group drawing. We conceptualize group drawing as a form of social play where children can advance personal creative abilities through interactions and shared understandings with others. The two cases derive from a study that examined young children's group play through drawing. A preschool class of 16 children (aged 4–5) was observed during free play over eight 1-hour sessions. Children were free to come and go as they pleased from an art station consisting of large drawing surfaces and a variety of drawing materials. Findings from the two selected cases suggest the development of shared meaning supports creative collaboration in group drawing situations, as children use a variety of verbal and non-verbal strategies to communicate their ideas. Implications are offered for early childhood educators and environments seeking to promote creative collaboration.     

Childhood emotional abuse and attachment processes in the dyadic adjustment of dating couples

In an effort to improve understanding of the mechanisms that link early maltreatment to later outcomes, this study investigated the mediation effects of adult attachment processes on the association between childhood emotional abuse and later romantic relationships among heterosexual couples. College students and their dating partners (N = 310; 155 couples) completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, Experiences in Close Relationship Scale, and Dyadic Adjustment Scale. Using the Actor–Partner Interdependence Model (Kenny, Kashy, & Cook, 2006), multilevel modeling results indicated that memories of childhood emotional abuse reported by both students and their partners were significantly associated with attachment strategies, as well as romantic relationship quality. Findings supported hypothesized mediation effects of attachment anxiety and avoidance.     

Creativity and Ethics: The Relationship of Creative and Ethical Problem-Solving

Students of creativity have long been interested in the relationship between creativity and deviant behaviors such as criminality, mental disease, and unethical behavior. In this study we wished to examine the relationship between creative thinking skills and ethical decision-making among scientists. Accordingly, 258 doctoral students in the health, biological, and social sciences were asked to complete a measure of creative processing skills (e.g., problem definition, conceptual combination, idea generation) and a measure of ethical decision-making examining four domains: data management, study conduct, professional practices, and business practices. It was found that ethical decision-making in all four of these areas was related to creative problem-solving processes with late-cycle processes (e.g., idea generation and solution monitoring) proving particularly important. The implications of these findings for understanding the relationship between creative and deviant thought are discussed.     

Personal Characteristics that Distinguish Creative Scientists from Less Creative Scientists

What are the personal characteristics that distinguish the creative scientist from the less creative scientist? This study used the concept of implicit theory in a four‐part study of scientists and graduate students in science. In the first part, we collected 1382 adjective words that describe the personal characteristics of the creative scientist from 354 scientists. In the second part of the study, 542 additional scientists assessed these adjectives. We determined that the personal characteristics of the creative scientist fit into four factors: personality, thinking ability, research ability, and uniqueness. In the third part of the study, we found that the concepts of thinking ability and uniqueness would positively predict 221 graduate students' self‐perceived creativity, and research ability would positively predict their creative motivation. The last part of the study involved having 283 creative scientists and 264 less creative scientists from 30 research institutions rated by three colleagues on the above four factors. A logistic regression found that thinking ability was best able to identify creative scientists while personality best predicted less creative scientists.     

Creative style,personality, and artistic endeavor

Research has shown that creative style, as measured by the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory (KAI; M. J. Kirton, 1976), is correlated with more than 30 different personality traits. In this article, the author demonstrates that many of these correlations can be understood within the framework of the Five-Factor Model of personality and shows that the predominant correlates of creative style are personality indicators in the domains of the factors Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience, and, to a lesser extent, Extraversion. These findings provide a basis for comparing the personality traits associated with creative style and occupational creativity. High scorers on the KAI (innovators) differ from both average and creative scientists but have personality characteristics similar to those of artists. This finding suggests that the artistic personality may be more common than is generally supposed and that common factors might underlie both artistic endeavor and creative style.     

Higher‐order factors of creativity within Guilford's structure‐of‐intellect model: A re‐analysis of a fifty‐three variable data base

Both exploratory factor analyses (varimax and promax solutions) and confirmatory maximum likelihood factor analyses were used to re‐examine a correlation matrix of 53 tests from a battery administered to a sample of more than 400 Air Force officers. The data base originated in a report from the University of Southern California Aptitudes Research Project (Guilford, Wilson, & Christensen, 1952), which was intended to identify factors of creative thinking. The major objective of this study was to ascertain whether the covariation among the test variables that were conceptualized as first‐order factors within the structure‐of‐intellect model could be explained parsimoniously in terms of a number of higher‐order creative abilities. Application of a relatively objective oblique exploratory factor analytic technique (promax) afforded a replication of four of Guilford's creativity factors—two divergent production constructs of ideational fluency and word fluency, one construct representing sensitivity to problems, and another identified as redefinition or flexibility of closure typically involving transformations. Although substantial support was found for higher‐order factor models which distinguished among five types of psychological operations and three kinds of test content, statistical indicators of closeness‐of‐fit suggested that a mixed model of both first‐order and higher‐order factors was required to describe creativity thinking, perhaps within some form of hierarchical ordering. In addition to recognition of divergent production as a key component of creative endeavor, it appeared that a higher‐order convergent production factor involving primarily semantic and symbolic transformations constituted a dimension of potential importance to the creative thinking of mathematicians, scientists, engineers, and inventors. It was hypothesized that in creative thinking a variety of psychological operations within a dynamic interactive system is employed almost simultaneously in a forward and backward manner.     

Creativity and Ethics: The Relationship of Creative and Ethical Problem-Solving

Students of creativity have long been interested in the relationship between creativity and deviant behaviors such as criminality, mental disease, and unethical behavior. In the present study we wished to examine the relationship between creative thinking skills and ethical decision-making among scientists. Accordingly, 258 doctoral students in the health, biological, and social sciences were asked to complete a measure of creative processing skills (e.g., problem definition, conceptual combination, idea generation) and a measure of ethical decision-making examining four domains, data management, study conduct, professional practices, and business practices. It was found that ethical decision-making in all four of these areas was related to creative problem-solving processes with late cycle processes (e.g., idea generation and solution monitoring) proving particularly important. The implications of these findings for understanding the relationship between creative and deviant thought are discussed.     

The Relationship Between Creativity and Behavior Problems Among Underachieving Elementary and High School Students

Understanding the role creative potential may play in the underachievement of some students could help schools and parents understand underachievers. This study examined whether there is a relationship between creativity and behavior problems among underachievers. Forty-one elementary and 89 high school students and 4 teachers in Korea participated in this study. The principal study involved comparing all of the students' scores on the 3 measures of creative potential (Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking-Figural [TTCT], Runco Ideational Behavior Scale [RIBS], and Scales for Rating the Behavioral Characteristics of Superior Students-Revised Edition [SRBCSS-R]), with their scores on a measure of behavior problems reported by their teachers. The results indicated that, among underachievers, there is a relationship between behavioral problems and students' scores on the 3 measures of creative potential. An understanding of these students and their behavior will help us promote creative students' academic and lifelong success in classrooms.     

Childhood physical and sexual abuse,and adult health risk behaviours among university students from 24 countries in Africa,the Americas and Asia

The goal of this study was to retrospectively estimate the prevalence of childhood physical abuse (CPA) and childhood sexual abuse (CSA) in relation to experience of adult violence, poor mental health, addictive behaviour and sexual risk behaviour among university students from 24 countries in Africa, the Americas and Asia. In a cross-sectional survey, data were collected from 18 404 undergraduate university students (mean age 20.7, SD = 2.9, age range of 16–30 years) from 24 countries. Overall, 5.0%, 2.6% and 1.2% of the students reported childhood physical abuse, childhood sexual abuse and childhood physical and sexual abuse, respectively. In the logistic regression models, adjusting for age, sex, study year, family wealth, and country, having experienced CPA and CSA was associated with increased odds of having any adult violence (physical and sexual partner violence victimisation. Having been in a physical fight, and weapon carrying), any poor mental health (post-traumatic stress disorder, depression symptoms and sleeping problems), addictive behaviour (tobacco use, binge drinking, frequent gambling and obesity) and sexual risk-taking was higher with a self-reported history of CPA and CSA.     

Exposure to the Chinese famine in early life and depression in adulthood

We aimed to investigate whether exposure to the Chinese famine (1959–1961) in early life was associated with depression in adulthood. We included 17,505 participants from the China health and retirement longitudinal study (CHARLS). Participants were classified into indirect and direct exposure groups. And the directly exposure groups including prenatal, childhood, adolescence/adult exposure groups. Depression was diagnosed by Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale-10 (CES-D) score. Multivariate logistic regression model was used to calculate the odd ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of depression. In women, prenatal, childhood, adolescence/adult exposure groups had higher depression risk than indirect exposure group (OR = 1.46, 1.40, and 1.67, respectively). However, there was no significant association between famine exposure and depression among men. Exposure to famine during prenatal (OR: 1.48; 95% CI: 1.07–2.06), childhood (OR: 1.47; 95% CI: 1.13–1.91), and adolescence/adult (OR: 1.63; 95% CI: 1.24–2.15) period were associated with depression among subjects living in rural, but not those living in urban. Exposure to the Chinese famine in early life had sex and area-specific associations with depression.     

The Structure of Creative Thinking: Visual and Verbal Areas

The main purpose of this study was to study the structure of creative thinking of students in visual and verbal areas. The Torrance Test of Creative Thinking Figural and Verbal forms were used. The participants were Turkish elementary school 7th grade students (M = 13 years, range = 12–14 years). The findings indicated that the relationship between visual and verbal areas of creative thinking of students were statistically significant and meaningful. Additionally, gender differences were statistically significant and meaningful. The results indicate that the structure of creative thinking of students is holistic in early puberty age, at least in terms of visual and verbal areas of creative thinking. However, the holistic structure of students’ creative thinking has flexible character regarding to low (r = .25) level of relationship between visual and verbal areas. This result suggests that the visual and verbal materials can be used with presentation and narrative techniques in balanced education activities for the development of students’ creative thinking effectively.     

Developing Creative Behavior in Elementary School Students with Robotics

The School Robotics Initiative (SRI ), a problem‐based robotics program for elementary school students, was developed with the objective of reaching students early on to instill an interest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math disciplines. The purpose of this exploratory, observational study was to examine how the SRI fosters student creative behavior. Weekly observations of 194 students (4th–6th grade) were conducted in three classrooms, over 3 years. Supplemental data were collected from student‐written journals. Data were coded for themes. The findings revealed that the robotics classrooms were characterized by a high degree of energy. The students worked intensely on robotic tasks, engaging in a two‐stage creative process that involved first designing a robot with a preplanned or spontaneous work approach, followed by an iterative period of trial and error creative programming. A variety of creativity techniques were observed being used. The SRI was shown to develop creative behavior in the students through the myriad of creative robot products generated. Based on the findings, the authors propose a componential model for developing creative behavior in the students through robotics, which includes a set of social, psychological, and physical elements necessary for the students to produce creative results in school robotics programs.     

Imaginary Companions in Childhood: What Can Prospective Longitudinal Research Tell Us About Their Fate by Adolescence?

Do adolescents remember imaginary companions (ICs) from early childhood? Researchers interviewed 46 adolescent participants in a prospective longitudinal study about their ICs from early childhood (age 5½). The existence of one or more ICs was documented in early childhood for 48% of children (G. Trionfi & E. Reese, 2009). At age 16, most adolescents had forgotten their early childhood ICs: Only 5 of the 23 participants who had early childhood ICs recalled those ICs later. Eight participants who had forgotten their early childhood ICs recalled a later IC, and four participants who did not have an IC at age 5 ½ reported one by age 16. Ten of the 23 participants who had early childhood ICs claimed never to have had an IC. Girls were more likely to recall their early childhood ICs. Retrospective reports of ICs in adolescence or later life may be unreliable for investigating differences between those with and without imaginary companions. Those with ICs may not be a homogenous group, with some creating ICs throughout childhood and some desisting from this behavior in early childhood. Findings indicate that both the remembering and forgetting of ICs has potential to illuminate cognitive and creative processes surrounding both memory and imagination.     

The internal consistency reliability and construct validity of the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity among 8- to 11-year-old students in Wales

ABSTRACT

The Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity was designed in the mid-1970s to assess individual differences in attitude through childhood, adolescence, and adulthood from the age of 8?years upwards. This study examines the internal consistency reliability, factor structure, and construct validity of the instrument 40?years later among 1511 year 4 students (8–9 years), 1544 year 5 students (9–10 years), and 1526 year 6 students (10–11 years) in Wales attending Church in Wales voluntary aided and voluntary controlled primary schools. The data support the internal consistency reliability and construct validity of the instrument among the age range and commend the instrument for continued use in research.     

Gender Specificity of Children’s Narrative Representations in Predicting Depressive Symptoms at Early School Age

Our longitudinal study contributes to the body of literature on depression in childhood by examining potential protective factors. We investigated the influence of maternal depressive symptoms on child depressive symptoms at early school age and its gender-specific moderation by children’s narrative representations of the maternal figure, over and above children’s own depressive symptoms at preschool age. Children’s narrative representations were assessed using the MacArthur Story Stem Battery in 170 preschool children (92 girls; 54.1?%) oversampled for internalizing symptoms. Children’s depressive symptoms were assessed at preschool age (Time 1; 4–6 years) and at early school age (Time 2; 6–8 years) by maternal report; mothers’ depressive symptoms were assessed at Time 1. The results showed that for boys, only their own depressive symptoms at Time 1 predicted their depressive symptoms at Time 2. For girls, maternal depressive symptoms were a significant risk factor for their own depressive symptoms at Time 2. Regarding this association, we also found a moderation effect: girls with more positive narrative representations of the maternal figure showed a reduced negative impact of maternal depressive symptoms on their own depressive symptoms at Time 2. This implies that clinical practice should screen a child for early depressive symptoms, especially if the mother displays depressive symptoms. Clinicians might also assess children’s inner working models, which can serve as a protective factor.     

Therapeutic Intervention,Bipolar Inclination,and Literary Creativity

Richards (1997) proposes an "edge-of-chaos" theory of creativity, suggesting that circumstances that present widely disparate perspectives and ideas not perfectly coordinated with each other can stimulate creative thought, especially among persons of bipolar mood inclination. Barnes's (1996) play therapy procedure is well constituted to meet the criteria stipulated by this theory. Forty-four college students experienced 40 min of play therapy, and another 44 read and interpreted children's stories from different cultures. Half the students in each condition showed an inclination toward bipolar mood disorder as measured by the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (3rd ed.; Millon, 1994); the other half did not. Persons with an inclination toward bipolar disorder who underwent play therapy exhibited creative performance significantly more than other persons.     

Creative Ideation Meets Relational Support: Measuring Links Between these Factors in Early Adolescence

This study examines measurement of creative ideational behaviors alongside factors of student engagement that may play a role in the development of students’ creative potential during early adolescence in school. Two studies used exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, cross-validation, and invariance testing of 2 extant measures with multiple samples of 6th grade students in the United States. Key findings show that reduced versions of the Runco Ideational Behavior Scale for Students (RIBS-C) and the student engagement instrument (SEI) demonstrated a close fit to the data and sufficient evidence of reliability and validity. In addition, flexibility in creative ideation showed consistently high correlations with relational support with peers and teachers and educational aspiration and relevance. Results provide greater precision for future measurement and support for developmental and sociocultural theories of creativity in the learning environment. This study also reinforces the cognitive perspective that distinguishes properties of fluency and flexibility.     

Cross-Field Differences in Creative Problem-Solving Skills: A Comparison of Health, Biological, and Social Sciences

In the present study, 258 doctoral students working in the health, biological, and social sciences were asked to solve a series of field-relevant problems calling for creative thought. Proposed solutions to these problems were scored with respect to critical creative thinking skills such as problem definition, conceptual combination, and idea generation. Results indicated that health, biological, and social scientists differed with respect to their skill in executing various operations, or processes, involved in creative thought. Interestingly, no differences were observed as a function of the students' level of experience. The implications of these findings for understanding cross-field, and cross-experience level, differences in creative thought are discussed.