Experimental Study Of Fifth Grade Children Of The Creative Imagination

Children's creative acts are usually behaved as creative i~nagery. Studies on children'screative imagery started a very long time ago. Researchers have discussed the characteristicsof children's creative imagery in kinds of methods. But there is almost a blank on the study ofthe cognitive processes of children's creative imagery. Finke (1990) has studied the creativeimagery of adults. He found that people's creativity would be promoted when the categoriespeople imaged or interpreted were constraint if the imagery materials were limited. Finke e t(1992) have used Geneplore Model of creative cognition to interpret these results.In this research, we planned to investigate the cognitive processes of children's creativeimagery using methods modified from Finke's methods. We predicted that children's creativeimagery was consist of generative phrase and interpretive phrase. When they began toimagine, children first generated one form using certain materials, then explored its possibleinterpretations; if the categories children imaged or interpreted were limited, children'screative inventions would increase, and there would be sexual difference in children's creativeimagery.Eighty-seven 5-grade pupils in Beibei zhongshan Street Primary School wereparticipated in this experiment. The subjects were divided into three groups. The I St groupwas unconstrained group, the categories of subjects imaged and interpreted wereunconstrained, and there were 11 boys and 19 girls in this group. The 2nd grOup wasimagery-constrained group, the categories subjects imaged were constrained but thecategories subjects interpreted were unconstrained, and there were 15 boys and 16 girls in thisgroup. The 3rd group was interpretation-constrained group, the categories subjects imagedwere unconstrained but the categories subjects interpreted were constrained, and there were13 boys and 13 girls in this group. The subjects' mean age was 10.9. We got the followingfindings in this experimental condition:(1)The total creative scores of the imagery-constrained group and theinterpretation-constrained group were higher than the unconstraint group, furthermore thetotal creative scores of the interpretation-constraint group was significantly higher than theunconstraint group (p< .01).(2)If the categories that subjects imaged or interpreted are not very familiar to subjects,they would promote children's creative founding.(3)The total creative scores of boys were significantly higher than girls (p< .01), but itmaybe caused by the categories that subjects imagined or interpreted.