Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Creativity is an elusive construct that is difficult to measure in children, and divergent thinking tasks have been overusedand may be unreliable as measures of creativity (Baer, 2011). This study examines creative process and achievement inchildren using a problem-solving task (Daehler & Chen, 1993). Children (N=98) ages 4 to 6 tried removing a ball from ajar using common objects. Success with retrieving the ball was a measure of creative achievement. Creative process wasassessed by coding creative behaviors such as object exploration, combinations, manipulation, and ball retrieval attempts.Results suggest differences in creative behaviors between successful and unsuccessful children. Successful participantscreated more unique object combinations (p=0.02), spent more time manipulating (p=0.05), and spent less time attemptingto retrieve the ball (p=0.02) than unsuccessful children. Results suggest that this task moves beyond divergent thinkingassessments by measuring both creative process and achievement in children.