Developmental trends in creative ability: a cross-sectional examination of figural and verbal domains across the school-age years

Abstract

Studies of creative ability across ages and grade levels show inconsistent results. Further, past studies have rarely used tasks from multiple creativity domains. The current study examined the differences in creative ability across grade levels (1st-10th grade), task domains (verbal and figural), and performance criteria (creativity, novelty/originality, elaboration, emotion use). Results showed that (1) within task domain, ratings of creativity tended to steadily increase with grade level, while other performance criteria showed slumps and jumps; (2) more jumps and slumps were evident in the verbal task than in the figural task, and (3) correlations between different performance criteria on the figural and verbal tasks is similar across grade levels and speaks to domain specificity of creative abilities. Taken together, these results point to a complex relationship between grade level, task domain, and creativity-related performance criteria, and the need for more research across these areas.