THE RELATIONSHIP OF PROBLEM SOLVING/EVALUATION ABILITY TO COGNITIVE AND NONCOGNITIVE ASPECTS OF CREATIVE PRODUCTION
Abstract
Purpose. Evaluation is essential to the problem solving process but gaps remain in the literature when examining the role of evaluation in creativity. This study attempted to fill these gaps by examining the relationship of problem solving ability to cognitive and noncognitive aspects of creativity. Method. Subjects were 56 girls and 53 boys from four fourth-grade classrooms in a small midwestern city. Intelligence was measured by the Lorge-Thorndike Test, Multi-Level Edition. Problem solving was measured by the Purdue Elementary Problem Solving Inventory. The eight creative thinking scores were obtained from worksheets which depicted open-ended problem situations requiring written creative responses. Worksheets were graded in terms of fluency, flexibility, originality, elaboration, quality, fantasy, aggression, and transcendence. Results. Correlational analyses indicated that: (a) Variability existed in creative production across tasks; (b) mean creative thinking scores of fluency, flexibility, originality, quality, and transcendence significantly intercorrelate among themselves, while only quality is affected by sex differences; (c) significant relationships between problem solving and flexibility, originality, quality, aggression, fantasy, and transcendence were noted and sex differences were apparent; (d) IQ was significantly correlated to seven creativity measures and to problem solving. After partial correlations were performed, originality, aggression and quality measures maintained significant positive correlations with problem solving while a significant negative correlation between problem solving and elaboration was revealed. For males, fluency and flexibility was also positively correlated with problem solving ability. This relationship did not hold true for females. Conclusions. The data indicate that: (a) The worksheets were not isomorphic and they were not sufficient measures of fantasy and aggression; (b) the transcendence measure requires utilization of internal resources and seems to represent a useful measure of imagination and internal referencing. Transcendence also provides the link between the noncognitive traits and the cognitive creative thinking abilities of fluency, flexibility and originality; (c) the quality measure may represent internal evaluation which is congruent with other aspects of creative thinking; (d) the ability to evaluate seems to enhance the originality and quality of creative thinking in both sexes.
Subject Area
Psychology
Recommended Citation
MONTGOMERY, CATHERINE W, "THE RELATIONSHIP OF PROBLEM SOLVING/EVALUATION ABILITY TO COGNITIVE AND NONCOGNITIVE ASPECTS OF CREATIVE PRODUCTION" (1983). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI8308484.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI8308484
