The Impossible as a Stimulator of Creativity in Children

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The Impossible as a Stimulator of Creativity
in Children

• Eugene Subbotsky
• Reader in Developmental Psychology (emeritus)
• Lancaster University, Lancaster, Great Britain

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Acknowledgements

• Clare Hysted and Nicola Jones
• Lancaster University, UK

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Abstract

• The study reported in this presentation showed
  that exposing children to a movie with the
  impossible, fantastical creatures and events
  facilitates their creativity in realistic
  thinking to a significantly larger extent, than
  exposing the children to the movie with equally
  interesting and exiting, but ordinary creatures
  and events.
• This study implies that movies and books with
  fantastical content can be an important source of
  enhancing creativity.

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The tool less ordinary

• One of multiple functions of tools, such as a
  hammer or language, is action amplification
  through mediation.
• Tools are used by both humans and animals.
• There is, however, a kind of tool-mediators which
  is specific to humans. This kind of tools is
  images of creatures or events, which are
  impossible.

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Impossible entities

• By impossible entities and events (the
  impossibles IPs) I refer to the entities and
  events that exist in the imagination, but not in
  reality.
• Examples building a castle by a magic spell,
  flying horses, gods that can read human minds and
  feed on the fumes from sacrificed animals

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Contrasting possible entities

• By contrasting possible entities (contrasting
  possibles CPs) I understand the exact opposite
  to the IPs the creatures or events that can
  exist both in imagination and in reality.
• For instance, for the IP such as an apple
  flying upwards by itself the CP is an apple
  falling down on earth, for the IP such as a
  half man-half horse the CP is a man and a
  horse.

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The problem

• Are IPs more efficient facilitators of childrens
  learning than CPs?
• For example, is it more effective to help
  children understand and remember the law of
  gravity by showing them an image of an apple,
  which is lifting up in the air by itself, or by
  showing them an apple falling down on earth?

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IP
CP
GROUND
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• Hypothesis 1 images of bodies falling down on
  earth should work better than images of
  non-flying bodies that are spontaneously lifting
  themselves up in the air.
• Reason the bodies falling down on earth are a
  part of childrens everyday experience, whereas
  the non-flying bodies moving up in the air by
  themselves are not.

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• Hypothesis 2 images of non-flying bodies
  lifting themselves up in the air should work
  better than images of the bodies falling down on
  earth
• Reason the CP exists only as a single image
  (i.e. an image of a horse).
• In contrast, the IP exists as a paired image
  whenever people process the IP in their
  imagination (i.e., a winged horse), they become
  aware that such an entity is impossible and this,
  with necessity, brings an images of the CPs (a
  horse and a bird) into the focus of their minds.

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Implication

• The attention grabbing capacity of IPs should be
  greater than the attention grabbing capacity of
  CPs
• because when the IP is being processed in the
  mind, its attention grabbing capacity is added to
  by the attention grabbing capacity of the CP.

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Attention grabbing capacity

• Possible
• Impossible

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• The more attention grabbing and interesting an
  image is, the stronger it affects various
  psychological faculties, such as memory, creative
  thinking and perception

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CREATIVE THINKING
PERCEPTION
MEMORY
IMAGINATION
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The study

• Aimed to compare the facilitating impact of IPs
  and CPs on childrens creative thinking.
• Creative thinking is the ability to generate
  novel behavior that meets a standard of quality
  and/or utility (Eisenberger, Haskins,
  Gambleton, 1999).

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Thinking about the IPs

• Provides non-trivial novel solutions to common
  problems (i.e., one can move from one place to
  another faster by riding a dragon than by riding
  a horse).

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Implication

• The common features of thinking about the IP and
  creative thinking novelty and non-triviality.
• Engaging children in one of these activities --
  thinking about the IP -- might enhance the other
  activitycreative thinking.
• Mechanism - priming or (and) association.

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Hypothesis

• Exposure to cinema and TV affects childrens
  subsequent thinking (Singer Singer, 2001).
• Exposing children to a movie with impossible
  entities and events would facilitate their
  creative thinking to a larger extent than
  exposing the children a film with equally
  attractive but possible entities and events.

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EXPERIMENT 1

• British 4- and 6-yr.-old children were shown a
  film (based on the Harry Potter series) with
  either IP or CP entities.
• Torrances Thinking Creatively in Action and
  Movement (TCAM) test was used to measure
  childrens capacity to show creativity (Torrance,
  1981).
• Another test used for assessing creativity was
  the test of drawing nonexistent (impossible)
  items (Karmiloff-Smith, 1989).

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Post-tests
Exposure to the films
Experimental group
Control group
Pre-tests
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Results

• After, but not before exposure to the films, the
  children who watched the film with IPs showed
  significantly higher creativity than those who
  watched the film with CPs.

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Scores on TCAM by children, who watched the film
with impossible (black bars) and possible (grey
bars) entities
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EXPERIMENT 2

• (1) To replicate Experiment 1 results, with 6-
  and 8-yr.-old children, and with a different
  experimenter doing the experiment,
• (2) To examine whether exposure to the film with
  the IP entities, along with increasing childrens
  creativity, also increases their beliefs in that
  IP are real

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Results

• Experiment 2 successfully replicated results of
  Experiment 1.
• Interestingly, exposing children to a film with
  the IP entities did not affect their beliefs
  about the IP entities reality.

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Conclusions

• Exposing children to the impossible entities and
  events increases the childrens creativity to a
  larger extent, than exposing children to the
  contrasting possible entities and events.
• Rather than being a mere byproduct of cognitive
  development that can occasionally be used for
  entertainment, thinking of the impossible can be
  viewed as a resource for boosting creativity in
  children.

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• Thanks for your attention