Individual differences in children's innovative problem-solving are not predicted by divergent thinking or executive functions | Zendy

Sarah R. Beck | Zendy; Clare Williams | Zendy; Nicola Cutting | Zendy; Ian A. Apperly | Zendy; Jackie Chappell | Zendy

Open Access

Individual differences in children's innovative problem-solving are not predicted by divergent thinking or executive functions

Author(s) -

Sarah R. Beck,

Clare Williams,

Nicola Cutting,

Ian A. Apperly,

Jackie Chappell

Publication year - 2016

Publication title -

philosophical transactions of the royal society b biological sciences

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 2.753

H-Index - 272

eISSN - 1471-2970

pISSN - 0962-8436

DOI - 10.1098/rstb.2015.0190

Subject(s) - working memory , executive functions , psychology , divergent thinking , cognitive psychology , proxy (statistics) , creativity , developmental psychology , cognitive flexibility , variation (astronomy) , cognition , flexibility (engineering) , social psychology , computer science , neuroscience , statistics , physics , mathematics , machine learning , astrophysics

Recent studies of children's tool innovation have revealed that there is variation in children's success in middle-childhood. In two individual differences studies, we sought to identify personal characteristics that might predict success on an innovation task. In Study 1, we found that although measures of divergent thinking were related to each other they did not predict innovation success. In Study 2, we measured executive functioning including: inhibition, working memory, attentional flexibility and ill-structured problem-solving. None of these measures predicted innovation, but, innovation was predicted by children's performance on a receptive vocabulary scale that may function as a proxy for general intelligence. We did not find evidence that children's innovation was predicted by specific personal characteristics.

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