Early Predictors of Creative Writing at Age 9

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Badini, Isabella; Toivainen, Teemu; Oliver, Bonamy R and Kovas, Yulia. 2018. Early Predictors of Creative Writing at Age 9. The European Proceedings of Social & Behavioural Sciences EpSBS, 49(8), pp. 63-74. [Article]

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2018.11.02.8

Abstract or Description

The present study investigated the extent to which creative expressiveness in writing at age 9 could be predicted by early human figure drawing ability and general cognitive ability, measured at age 4. Participants (N=277) were members of the Twins Early Development Study, for whom measures of human figure drawing and general cognitive ability were available at age 4 and a measure of creative writing was available at age 9. Creativity was measured with the Consensual Assessment Technique, which is a commonly used technique to estimate creativity of a product. Each story, based on three pictures shown to children, was coded on 10 dimensions by five independent judges. Creative Expressiveness score was created as a composite measure of dimensions that correlated highly with creativity dimension. Human figure drawing ability, measured by The Draw-A-Child test at 4, was found
to be a weak but significant predictor of Creative Expressiveness at age 9 (r =.17). General cognitive ability at 4 did not predict Creative Expressiveness in writing at 9. It is concluded that examining
individual differences in human figure drawing ability may provide a promising direction for exploring the early antecedents of creativity throughout childhood.

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Article

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https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2018.11.02.8