Abstract: Studies of creative ability across ages and grade levels show inconsistent results. Further, past studies have rarely used tasks from multiple creativity domains. The current study examined the differences in creative ability across grade levels (Grades 1 through 10), task domains (verbal and figural), and performance criteria (creativity, novelty/originality, elaboration, emotion use). Results showed that (a) within task domain, ratings of creativity tended to steadily increase with grade level, whereas other performance criteria showed slumps and jumps; (b) more jumps and slumps were evident in the verbal task than in the figural task; and (c) correlations between different performance criteria on the figural and verbal tasks are similar across grade levels and speak to domain specificity of creative abilities. Taken together, these results point to a complex relationship between grade level, task domain, and creativity-related performance criteria, and the need for more research across these areas. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Authorship

Download reference