Open AccessCONVERGENT AND DIVERGENT MEASUREMENT OF CREATIVITY IN CHILDREN
Author(s) -
Ward William C.
Publication year - 1971
Publication title -
ets research bulletin series
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2333-8504
pISSN - 0424-6144
DOI - 10.1002/j.2333-8504.1971.tb00613.x
Subject(s) - creativity , psychology , divergent thinking , associative property , convergent thinking , variance (accounting) , convergent validity , association (psychology) , test (biology) , repertoire , cognitive psychology , associative learning , developmental psychology , social psychology , psychometrics , mathematics , creative thinking , paleontology , physics , accounting , internal consistency , acoustics , pure mathematics , business , psychotherapist , biology
Fourth through sixth grade children were given two kinds of creativity measures–divergent measures in which the child named all the ideas he could that met a simple requirement, and convergent measures, adaptations of Mednick's Remote Associates Test, in which he attempted to find one word which was associatively related to each of three others. Divergent and convergent measures shared little variance, and the latter were strongly correlated with IQ and achievement. Moreover, convergent items requiring production of the correct association were strongly related to items requiring only recognition. It was argued that in children Remote Associates performance depends on evaluative abilities rather than the size of the associative repertoire.