The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of verbal experience on children's creative expression and to develop more precise means for interpreting and evaluating children's art. Two questions were of interest: (1) Does the experimental approach described here enable children to resist forces tending to cause stereotyped artistic…

In an effort to improve the predictability of course grades in the College of Fine and Applied Arts the Torrance Figural Test (Form B) of Creative Thinking was administered to entering 1968 freshmen. Four figural creativity variables (Fluency, Flexibility, Originality, and Elaboration) were correlated with course grades, American College Testing…

Innovative or adaptive behavior of 86 eighth-grade students was rated by themselves, parents, and teachers using the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory. The inventory was found to be reliable, stable, and valid. No significant differences between male and female students' scores were exhibited. Correlation with scores on the Comprehensive Test…

A Swedish research project dealing with creativity in schools is summarized and discussed. Interest areas include: (1) surveys of opinions about how to promote creativity in schools; (2) classroom observations on creativity-relevant teacher- student interactions; (3) development and try-out of certain Swedish tests for creativity; (4) studies of…

This book describes a study (conducted in Finland) which examined antecedent conditions for the development of creativity in children and evaluated a kindergarten activity program designed to increase children's creativity. Subjects were 168 kindergarten children (86 girls and 82 boys). Extensive information about each child's family was gathered,…

A set of tests that might be reasonably used as provisional criterion measures in research on scientific thinking, particularly creative thinking, were developed and an assessment was made of the suitability of these tests as criterion variables from the standpoint of their psychometric properties. The Tests of Scientific Thinking are performance…

This article compares measures of abstract thinking preference and divergent thinking to standard mathematics ability measures such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). In this study involving gifted tenth graders, mathematical creativity was found to be a special kind of creativity not necessarily related to divergent thinking ability. (PB)

Arts education and its assessment are discussed, with particular emphasis on the visual arts. Suggestions are made concerning the role of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in the arts. The curriculum which is presented in art education varies a great deal among schools. The assessment of art should include production,…

The relation between field independence-dependence and creativity was investigated in 40 fourth graders equally divided by sex. The measures used were the Children's Embedded Figures Test, several verbal and figural subtests from the Torrance Tests of Creativity, and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. No significant Pearson correlations were…

The effects of sex, verbal ability, test anxiety, ideational fluency and training procedures on Formulating Hypotheses test performance were studied. Training consisted of presentation of models of "acceptable" responses that stressed either quantity or quality performance. Both the quantity and quality models were effective in modifying…

The main emphasis of this investigation was to study the relationship of three cognitive styles (response tempo, response style and response ambiguity) of problem solving. A sample of 288 junior high school students participated in the study to ascertain the degree to which each cognitive style contributes to creative problem solving. The…

This publication marks the first volume of what is intended to be an annual showcase of outstanding research papers from the College of St. Thomas' (Minnesota) Masters of Arts in Gifted/Creative/Talented Education program. Section 1 focuses on gifted programs and teachers' perceptions, and includes "Taking Care of the Affective Needs of…

The first topic of the conference was creativity. Papers delivered were Knowledge and Creativity by Theodore C. Denise and Hobert W. Burns; Potentiality for Creativity and Its Measurement, by J. P. Guilford; and Some Methodological Issues in the Study of Creativity by Robert L. Thorndike. In the second session, a paper on comparability of scores…

The study was designed to provide a relatively simple method of identifying gifted Mexican-American elementary school children, using as Ss approximately 298 Mexican-Americans (in grades 3-6) from both urban and rural schools. Ss were rated by present and former teachers on traits found to be characteristic of highly creative and talented…

The identification of talent, and the understanding of its development and origins in terms of biographical data were investigated. The three central objectives were: to construct separate empirical procedures for Anglos and Blacks to predict certain academic performance criteria; to construct an empirical scoring procedure that could predict…