Imaginative youngsters become creative problem-solvers, study finds

Children who play imaginatively in their early years more often think creatively and solve problems effectively as they grow older, suggest the results of a recent study.

The study is the second in a longitudinal project conducted by Sandra Russ, PhD, psychology professor and chair at Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University. In 1987, the first study, undertaken with her colleague Nancy Peterson, PhD, explored the creativity of 121 first- and second-graders as they played with puppets and blocks.

The study found that children who showed high levels and quality of fantasy in their play, and who expressed more emotion, scored higher on a test of divergent thinking--the ability to generate many different ideas about a topic. The test required them to brainstorm alternate uses for such objects as a newspaper and a brick.

In the second study, conducted with 31 of the same children when they reached the fifth and sixth grades, children used puppets and blocks to act out a made-up story. Once again, those who had shown the most sophisticated, imaginative play when they were younger scored highest on the divergent-thinking task. They also scored higher on a test measuring their problem-solving ability in stressful situations--forgetting their lunch at home, for example, or dealing with a class bully.

"Because children come up with different ideas in fantasy play, taking on different roles and voices, it's practice for divergent thinking and problem-solving," says Russ. "They become better divergent thinkers over time."

The study, co-authored by former Case Western graduate students Andrew Robins and Beth Christiano and appearing in the current issue of Creativity Research Journal (Vol. 12, No. 2, p. 129-139), also found evidence that children who expressed more emotion in their early years expressed more emotion in their play stories in the fifth and sixth grades. Their ability to express emotion was relatively stable over time.

Russ acknowledges that the small sample was her study's major limitation. But the next installment is larger--examining creative thinking in more students from the original sample when they hit high school.

--B. Murray



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