Lit Review On Play And Creativity

Howard-Jones, P.A. , Taylor, J. and Sutton, L. (2002) The effects of play on the

creativity of young children, Early Child Development and Care, 172 (4), p

323-328.

The effect of play on the creativity of young children

during subsequent activity

PAUL A. HOWARD-JONES, JAYNE R. TAYLOR and LESLEY SUTTON

Cardiff School of Education, University of Wales Institute Cardiff.

ABSTRACT

This study investigated whether the experience of unstructured play in a preceding task may influence the creativity of young children in subsequent activity. 52 children in the age range 6-7 were randomly allocated to two groups. The first group was allowed to play with salt-dough for 25 minutes, while the other group followed a structured exercise involving the copying of text from the board. All children were then asked to produce a collage of a creature, using a controlled range of tissue-paper materials. The procedure was then repeated some days later, with the two groups experiencing the other preceding task. 10 judges (7 trainee teachers and 3 lecturers) judged the creative quality of the work arising. The range of colours and total number of pieces used by each child in each collage was also recorded. Analysis of the results revealed a significant positive effect of preceding task upon creativity and range of colours.

Keywords: Play, creativity

1 Email contact: [email protected]

2 INTRODUCTION

Play has been referred to as the “work” of children (Papilia and Olds, 1990) and the importance of play in the cognitive development of children has frequently been acknowledged. In particular, children’s tendency towards play, or playfulness, has been linked to creative thinking skills (Lieberman, 1965, Wallach, 1970, Lieberman,

1977) and tends to indicate a disposition towards creativity in later life (Clark,

Griffing and Johnson, 1989, Schmukler, 1982-3, Russ, Robins and Christiano, 1999).

Some immediate effects of playing have also been examined. An early study by

Sutton-Smith (1967) demonstrated how children’s ability to think up uses for an object was improved by being allowed to play with it. Dansky and Silverman (1973) exposed groups of pre-school children to conventional objects for 10 minutes. One group was allowed to play freely with it, another imitated an adult’s actions on the objects and the third group observed an adult act upon the objects. The free-play group scored significantly higher than the other two groups in an alternate uses test involving the objects. Dansky and Silverman (1975) later carried out a similar investigation but assessed the children’s ability, after exposure to objects, to produce alternate uses for new objects they had not seen before. The group who had been allowed to play transferred their playful disposition towards the new objects and again scored significantly higher than the other two groups. In interpreting this and other studies, Pellegrini (1984-1985) distinguishes between exploration and play, suggesting that exploration can be characterised by a behaviour that seeks to answer

“What is it?” “What can it do?”. This explorative behaviour then wanes and is replaced by a playful behaviour that is more concerned with “What can I do with it?”.

Pellegrini (1983-1984) suggests, given the short time that the children were allowed

3 with the object, that it may have been the transfer of an explorative mind set that supported the children in determining uses for the new object. This idea was successfully exploited in later studies that showed adult-led exploratory questioning to be more effective than free play in improving the general associative fluency of children (Pellegrini, 1981, 1982, Pellegrini and Greene, 1980).

Affect may also play a role in influencing the creativity observed in tasks following playful activity. In a study by Isen, Johnson, Mertz and Robinson (1985), adult subjects who watched films designed to induce a happy mood made more unusual associations on subsequent verbal tasks. However, these findings appear to conflict with those of Tighe, (1992), who found that subjects in positive mood conditions wrote stories that were rated as less creative than did subjects in either negative or neutral conditions. Further, Amabile (1996) reports that she has failed, in several attempts, to show that inducing a positive affect significantly influences the creativity of her subjects. Such apparently contradictory findings may be due to the relationship between associative fluency and more general measures of creativity (see below).

Additionally, the level of relaxation induced by the experimenters may be a more significant factor than the positive mood of their subjects. By considering models of creative cognition involving movement between focused and unfocused states of mind

(Martindale, 1995, Howard-Jones and Murray, in press), it can be predicted that relaxation of subjects should lead to greater associative fluency - as demonstrated for adults by Forgays and Forgays (1992).

Berretta and Privette (1990) measured the creativity of children using the Torrance

Tests of Creative Thinking for after they had experienced structured or flexible play

4 experiences. These tests provided scores for over-all creative thinking , fluency, flexibility and originality. Children who participated in flexible play experiences exhibited greater creative thinking than the children who had received highly structured play experiences. These higher scores derived from increases in originality of thinking rather than fluency or flexibility. The lack of an effect for fluency may be considered surprising in the light of studies such as Dansky and Silverman (1975).

Berretta and Privette (1990) suggest that those activities that benefit from improved creative thinking should be scheduled after free-play, so that they may benefit from increased originality.

Studies that use measures of associative fluency, and even those that include flexibility and originality, may not provide us with a direct indication of creativity in the broader sense. Creativity is most often defined as the ability to produce solutions which are both appropriate and original. The ability to access remote associations may be considered fundamental in producing original ideas. However, the appropriateness of an idea relies upon an individuals ability to focus critically upon it and refine it

(Martindale, 1995). The Consensual Assessment Technique (Amabile, 1996) provides a more general measure of creative value, by gaining a measurement of the creativity of an outcome according to a panel of individuals according to their own independently-formulated criteria. This technique has been used to assess the positive impact of creative activity upon college students, showing it to have beneficial effects upon creativity, intrinsic motivation and long-term retention (Conti, Amabile and

Pollak, 1995). The creative task employed, however, was directly related to the learning topic (dreams), and this was chiefly a study of longer-term effects than those considered in the present study.

5 The focus of the present study was to determine whether short periods of free-play have an influence upon the creativity demonstrated by young children in an activity typical of the curriculum, when this subsequent activity is not related to either the medium or topic of the preceding free-play. In this respect, it evaluated the potential effectiveness of the type of schedule proposed by Berreta and Privette (1990). Unlike previous studies, however, it assessed the effect of preceding task upon creativity using the Consensual Assessment Technique (Amabile, 1982) - in which an independent panel of judges subjectively rate the creative value of outcomes produced by children.

METHOD

DESIGN

Participants were attending a semi-rural, English-medium infants school in the South

Wales area. They were in the same year (aged 6-7 years old), and randomly allocated into two groups of twenty-six children: A and B.

A repeated-measures design was followed. On the first day, all fifty-two children assembled in the classroom. Group A left the room accompanied by a teacher and taken a spare classroom where they were allowed to indulge in free-play with salt dough. There were about 3 to 4 children per table, and each child was provided with approximately the same size piece of blue salt dough. They were instructed to “Do whatever you want with it” and given no other guidance. Interaction with the adult present was kept to an absolute minimum. At the same time, Group B were instructed

6 to complete a handwriting exercise that involved the copying of text from the board.

They were seated in groups of 6 to 7 and were each supplied with a pencil and a lined piece of paper. If the written task was completed they were asked to repeat it. After

25 minutes Group A were escorted back to the classroom where both groups A and B were addressed and asked to make a collage of a creature using the materials provided. The children sat in groups of 6-7 at a table. On the table were the following:

100 sheets of tissue paper (10 sheets of 10 different colours), 4 glue pots, 8 glue spreaders, 8 pairs of scissors and a sheet of paper for each child to make their collage on. The children were given 35 minutes to complete their collage and pencils were then distributed for the children to write their name upon their work.

The next day, at the same time, the whole procedure was repeated with the groups carrying out the alternative preceding task. Before creating their collage, Group A were allowed to play with the salt dough in the spare classroom while Group B carried out their handwriting exercise.

SCORING

The outcomes of the children were scored for their creativity according to Amabile’s consensual assessment technique (Amabile, 1982). This technique involves having judges independently and subjectively rate the level of creativity of the outcomes. All judges were blind to experimental condition but were made aware of the task given to the children. The initial panel of judges were 7 trainee teachers approaching the end of their third year of training. These trainees teachers, as result of their training, were already familiar with the type of outcomes that might be produced by children of this age, and thus their background met the criteria suggested by Amabile (1996) for

7 identifying appropriate judges. However, in order to confirm that the judgements were sound, the work was also judged by a panel of 3 “expert” judges who were experienced lecturers in Primary Education.

In addition to rating the outcomes for their creativity, they were analysed by counting the number of different colours used (colour range) and the overall number of pieces of tissue paper used to construct the collage.

RESULTS

The inter-judge reliability amongst the panel of 7 trainees was good (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.81), as was the inter-judge reliability amongst the panel of 3 expert judges

(Cronbach’s alpha = 0.84). There was also a good correlation between the two panels

(Pearson’s r = 0.80 , p < 0.001 ). Judgements from each of the 10 judges were added together to give a final score for each outcome out of 50, with inter-judge reliability

(Cronbach’s alpha = 0.89).

Means for the 3 dependent variables of creativity, colour range and number of pieces used, together with standard deviations, are shown in Table 1 for the two preceding tasks of a writing exercise and free-play with salt dough.

8 Creativity Colour range Number of pieces used Writing Play Writing Play Writing Play M 21.31 23.96 3.88 4.79 12.5 15.77 SD 8.38 8.36 1.58 1.91 7.00 11.23

Table 1 Mean and standard deviations for 3 dependent variables of creativity, colour range and number of pieces used.

Separate ANOVA analyses of the 3 dependent variables revealed that there was a significant subsequent effect of preceding task upon creativity (F (1,51) = 11.60, p

=0.001 ), colour range (F (1,51) = 10.70 , p = 0.002) and number of pieces used (F

(1,51) = 7.02, p = 0.011). However, correlation analysis revealed strong associations between these variables (p<0.01 for all combinations).

Although repeated-measures experimental designs are generally more sensitive experimental method than between-subjects studies, it has been pointed out that these methodologies can be vulnerable to differential transfer, especially when investigating the effect of instructional variables (Underwood and Shaughnessy, 1975). As a precaution against such effects, the first stage of the experiment was treated as a random groups design to investigate the effect of the independent variable without any possible influence from differential transfer (Poulton, 1982). Means and standard deviations for subjects arising from the first condition are shown in Table 2. Between- subjects ANOVA analysis of the 3 dependent variables from the first condition revealed that there was a significant subsequent effect of preceding task upon creativity (F(1,50) = 4.83, p = 0.033) and colour range (F (1,50) = 10.56, p = 0.002), but the effect upon the number of pieces did not reach significance (F(1,50) = 2.90 , p

9 = 0.095). Correlations between dependent variables were significant for all combinations (p < 0.01).

Creativity Colour range Number of pieces used Writing Play Writing Play Writing Play M 22.75 24.18 4.07 4.76 12.99 16.38 SD 9.08 8.27 1.77 1.97 6.96 13.26

Table 2 Mean and standard deviations for 3 dependent variables of creativity, colour range and number of pieces used for the first condition experienced by subjects.

DISCUSSION

The present study has shown that the nature of a preceding task, comparing a highly structured writing task with free-play, can influence the creative value of children’s outcomes in a subsequent task as judged by an independent panel. The study by

Dansky and Silverman (1975) demonstrated that preceding task can influence associative fluency, and Berreta and Privette (1990) found that the degree of structure of the preceding play could influence originality in later tasks, although not, apparently, fluency. The present study has not shed light upon which individual thinking skills are most influenced by the preceding task - but it has shown that the overall creative effect upon a subsequent activity typical of the school curriculum can be significant.

It remains, then, an issue of debate how such effects are best explained and what are the essential elements of play that support creativity subsequently. It may be, as discussed above, the transfer of a playful mind set (Danksy and Silverman, 1975), or

10 possibly an exploratory one (Pellegrini, 84-85). There was a statistically significant increase in the range of colours used - which may reflect an increased tendency to explore the materials provided. However, it would be very difficult to confidently analyse the outcome of a creative process in terms of what has been achieved by exploration and what is the result of playfulness. Indeed, such distinctions are difficult to make even from close observation and discussion with young subjects, due not least to limitations in language (Pellegrini, 84-85).

Alternative explanations for an increase in creativity might be the more relaxed mental state of the children after playing with the salt-dough (Forgays and Forgays,

1992), or simply that the children were more awake after a session of play than after a writing exercise. The increase in the number of pieces of tissue papers used in the children’s collages after the free-play session might be interpreted as evidence of a simple increase in general productivity. However, productivity and creativity are very closely associated with each other and so some increase in quantity of work should be expected (Diehl and Stroebe, 1987). If the effect is due only to a simple increase in general productivity (as opposed to creative productivity), one would also expect to detect it in non-creative tasks and this would be a useful line of enquiry for future investigations. Additionally, since tutored play has been shown to be more effective than free play in developing children’s associative fluency (Pellegrini, and

Greene,1980, Feitelson, and Ross, 1973), it would be interesting to know how the two types of activity might impact upon the rated creative value of outcomes in subsequent tasks - especially since Berreta and Privette (1990) found that fluency was not influenced by the degree of structure of the preceding play.

11 The type of motivation that the children were experiencing may also have influenced results. Children, when in the free play condition, were pursuing activities of their choice, and thus were intrinsically motivated. The children completed each part of the hand-writing exercise because they had been asked by the teacher to do so - and thus were being extrinsically motivated. According to the intrinsic/extrinsic motivation principle (Amabile, 1996), these two types of motivation will impact positively and negatively (respectfully) upon creativity. Thus our results could be explained by a transfer of the motivation type.

Many questions remain to be answered about the mechanisms by which play supports creativity and how the positive effects of play can transfer to other contexts. The present study further emphasises the need for a better understanding of the cognitive significance of play and to ensure it is given the consideration it deserves in educational programmes.

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