| Abstract: | One of the most controversial issues in contemporary research of creativity, whether a person's creativity is domain‐specific or domain‐general, was investigated in the present study. This study is composed of two parts, Study 1 and Study 2. In study 1, the relationships among 109 children's creative performances in three domains, and the relationships between those children's general creative thinking skills and their creative performances in three domains have been examined. Study 2 examines how the domain‐specificity and ‐generality issue is addressed in individual children via case studies of three highly creative children, hoping to provide enriching and qualitative specification to the quantitative data of the present study. In both studies, children's performances in language, art, and math domains were respectively judged by three experts who rated children's creativity on story‐telling, collage making, and math word‐problem creating tasks. Children's general creative thinking skills were assessed by a battery of two divergent thinking tests, including the Wallach‐Kogan Creativity Test (Wallach & Kogan, 1965) and the Real World Divergent Thinking Test adapted from Okuda, Runco, and Berger (1991). The findings of this study support the position that creative ability in young children is rather (but not absolutely) domain‐specific. |
