Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Creativity is the ability to produce work that is both novel and appropriate. The study, funded by Indian government, analyzed the effect of one-year chess training on the creativity of children. A pretest and posttest with control group design was used, with 31 children in experimental and 32 in control group. The experimental group underwent weekly chess training. Wallach-Kogan Creativity Test (Indian Adaptation) was used. Analysis revealed that only the experimental group had statistically significant gains in total creativity and two nonverbal subtests. The authors conclude that systematic chess training inculcates in the child the ability to think divergently and creatively.