Lecture 13
Creativity and Cognitive Development
Sir Ken Robinson → educated out of creativity
What is creativity?
my ideas
inovation
being original
novelty
coming up with an idea that is novel and appropriate/useful
risk taking
tolerance for ambiguity
motivation
knowledge
evaluation skills
big C creativity
move forward an entire field
little c creativity
we are all creative in our own lives
Measuring creativity
process-based
Divergent thinking tasks
product-based
Drawing/storytelling
Consensual assessment technique
judges rate how creative a work is
Question: how would these processes differ for children with neurodivergence?
Three aspects of creativity
Fluency
Originality
Flexibility
Do we lose creativity as we age?
Functional fixedness
difficulty using an object flexibly to solve a problem when the object’s typical
function has been highlighted
5 year olds do not show much of this
Creativity is associated with executive function (EF)
set of neurocognitive skills that support goal-directed thought and behavior
(planning, impulse control, focusing attention, etc.)
Three components
working memory
inhibitory control
cognitive flexibility
relies on the prefrontal cortex
more regulation of attention = less likely to notice cues and associations
what could you use a pencil for?
fire
knife
draw
skewer
eraser
hair clip
makeup
fork
EF helps at certain stages of the creative process
filetering perceptual emotional cues
holding in ming constraints
inhibiting obvious ideas
using strategies
evaluating and refining
when 5 to 6 year-olds are told to be creative, ideas get more creative for those with
higher EF scores
