The Performance Of Mid-school-age Children In Team Creativity Tasks And Its Influencing Factors

Group creativity refers to the process and procedure of group creating new and useful products.Group creativity is not a simple superposition of individual creativity level,but the product created jointly by group members in the context of social interaction.The existing researches on group creativity are all based on adults,and the research results are only applicable to adults.In this study,two experimental studies were conducted on middle school age children(children aged from 8 to 11 years old)to explore how their performance of team creativity changes over time in different tests of divergent thinking tasks,and what factors affect children's team creativity.In experiment 1,60 middle school age children were recruited for a six-month follow-up study on the group's level of team creativity using an alternative uses task(AUT)task.The results showed that the group's team creativity remained at a stable level over time.The results of the analysis of relevant factors showed that there was no significant correlation between the performance of team creativity and the individual creativity and cooperative behavior of the middle school-age children in the AUT task.The subjects in experiment 2 were the same as those in experiment 1,and they used a realistic presented problem(RPP)task to conduct a six-month follow-up study on their team's creativity level.The results showed that the group's level of team creativity in the RPP task would increase with time.The analysis of the results of relevant factors showed that there was a significant correlation between the team creativity and the individual creativity level and the cooperative behavior index of middle school age children in the RPP task.The results of cross-lag model analysis showed that the level of team creativity of middle school age children could predict their cooperative behavior after 6 months.The above results show that,in the real situation,the team creativity level of middle school age children has a significant increase with time,which is consistent with the previous results of the "fourth grade" critical period for the development of individual creativity in China.The team creativity of middle school age children is also influenced by the level of individual creativity and the level of group cooperation,which is consistent with the research results of adult subjects.Middle school age children with high level of team creativity will show more cooperative behaviors in the future.The study provides theoretical evidence for the in-depth understanding of the characteristics of children's team creativity and its influencing factors.