A Developmental Study On Pupils' Creativity In Conceptual Expansion

People regularly construct.stretch,extend,modify and refine old concepts to new ones.We use the term conceptual expansion to refer in general to this generative tendency in human conceptual functioning. In fact, it is a part of a more general focus on creative cognition. Despite the ubiquity of conceptual expansion in human activities .surprisingly little is known about it. In foreign countries, many psychologists, such as professor Ward, have shown their interests on this subject, and they also have carried out many studies on it through creative imagination. Task of imagination can provide important and useful information about conceptual expansion. As Ward point out, such work focus on two kinds of cognitive activities ,so it should be very significative. But there isn't any study on this question in China up to now.For the reasons mentioned above, this study focuses on the development of pupils' creativity in conceptual expansion. We adopted 3X2X2 blend design in this research. These three independent variables were grades(grade 2,grade 4 and grade 6), levels of abstraction of concept(basic level concept andsuperordinate level concept) and categories(living things and artifacts). In the three factors, levels of abstraction of concept and categories were inner-group factors. We got the following findings in this experimental condition:1.Pupils' creativity in conceptual expansion is developmental. With grade going up, creativity in concept expansion is rising. Grade is one of the influential factors of pupils' creativity in conceptual expansion.2.The level of abstraction of the concept is one of the influential factors of pupils' creativity in conceptual expansion. In grade two, taking two kinds of concepts with different levels of abstraction as materials, two creative scores have no significant difference. But in grade four and six, taking two kinds of concepts with different levels of abstraction as materials, two creative scores have significant difference. It shows that the creative score gained from concepts with the basic level is higher than creative scores from the superordinate level concepts.3.Category also is one of the influential factors of pupils' creativity in conceptual expansion.There is significant difference between pupils' creativity in conceptual expansion of living thing and artifacts. It shows that creative score gained from concepts of living thing is higher than creative scores from the concepts of artifacts.