Quantity and Quality of Creative Thinking in Children and Adolescents

Author(s): Roberta M. Milgram, Norman A. Milgram, Gaby Rosenbloom and Liat Rabkin
Source: Child Development, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Jun., 1978), pp. 385-388
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Society for Research in Child Development
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1128702
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 Quantity and Quality of Creative Thinking
in Children and Adolescents

Roberta M. Milgram
Tel-Aviv University

Norman A. Milgram
Tel-Aviv University and Bar Ilan University

Gaby Rosenbloom and Liat Rabkin

Tel-Aviv University

MILGRAM, ROBERTA M.; MILGRAM, NORMAN A.; ROSENBLOOM, GABY; and RABKIN, LIAT. Quan-
tity and Quality of Creative Thinking in Children and Adolescents. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1978,
49, 385-388. Quantity and quality of creative thinking on the Wallach and Kogan Creativity
Battery were moderately related in both six-grade children (N = 97) and high school seniors
(N = 145). These findings support the theoretical position that quantity is a necessary condi-
tion for the emergence of quality in creative thinking. Developmental differences favoring high
school seniors on unusual, but not on popular, responses were interpreted as supporting a cogni-
tive rather than a verbal learning approach to creative thinking.

Milgram and Milgram (1976b) reported Ward, Kogan, and Pankove (1972) attributed
a very strong relationship between the quan- the absence of a significant correlation between
tity and quality of creative activities in such the quantity and quality of responses in disad-
areas as art, writing, music, drama, or social vantaged, lower-class fifth graders to the limi-
leadership in high school seniors (r = .92 and tations of their method of rating quality. In
.89 for boys and girls, respectively). They the present study, judgments of the quality of
concluded that engaging in a wide variety of ideas were based upon different criteria, de-
activities, even at a superficial level, is a neces- scribed below.
sary condition for unusual and excellent cre-
ative attainments. The relationship of quantity Creative thinking has been investigated
and quality found in creative performance has across a wide age range, from 5 years old
not yet been demonstrated in creative thinking. through adulthood, but few developmental
The dimensions of creative thinking in earliercomparisons have been made. Torrance (1962)
reported a steady rise between sixth grade and
studies were ideational fluency or total number
the end of high school on the Minnesota Tests
of ideas and unusualness or number of statisti-
cally infrequent ideas; a strong relationship of Creative Thinking. The advantage conferred
was found between total number of responses by maturation and experience, however, will
and number of unusual responses (Milgram & affect the qualitative dimension of creative
Milgram 1976b; Wallach 1970; Wallach & thinking more than the quantitative: The dif-
Kogan 1965). ference between high school seniors and sixth
graders will be greater on unusual responses
The latter score is considered a valid mea-
of high quality than on usual responses.
sure of creative thinking because we assume
that the greater the number of unusual re-
Method
sponses the greater the number of responses of
high quality, that is, original, clever, novel, Subjects
"creative" responses. However, this assump- All subjects attended schools in middle-
tion has not yet been empirically demonstrated.
class neighborhoods and were of above average
This research was supported in part by the Israel Ministry of Education and Culture. We
are grateful to Jonathan Rimon for his wise counsel in the analysis of the data. Reprints may
be obtained from Roberta M. Milgram, School of Education, Tel-Aviv University, Ramat Aviv,
Israel.

[Child Development, 1978, 49, 385-388. @ 1978 by the Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.
0009-3920/78/4902-0016$00.751

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 386 Child Development
intelligence, as measured by the Milta (Ortar when composite or overlapping scores are used.
1966), a group test widely used in Israel. Overall ideational fluency, a composite score
They were, therefore, beyond the intelligence which includes the three nonoverlapping scores
level found to be the minimum requirement described above, is the most frequently used
for the production of creative thinking uncon- index of creative thinking. The correlation of
founded by intelligence (Milgram & Milgram this composite score with the high quality
1976a). The younger group consisted of 97 score was .65 and .84 for the younger and
sixth graders (58 boys and 39 girls), and the older groups, respectively. Its correlation with
older group of 145 high school seniors (60 a second composite score, the number of unusu-
young men and 85 young women). al responses regardless of quality, was equally
Materials high, .74 and .80, respectively; and the corre-
lation of this latter score to unusual responses
Creative thinking.-An abbreviated version
of high quality was .89 and .88, respectively.
of the Wallach and Kogan (1965) Creativity
Battery consisting of four subtests with four Percentages of each of the three types of
items per subtest was used. Each test response responses were computed for each group sepa-
was scored as either popular or unusual, that rately, by summing responses across subtests
is, given by more or less than 5% of the group, and dividing by total number of responses.
respectively. Two trained judges independently For the younger group, the percentages of high
scored each unusual response as possessing quality and low quality unusual responses were
quality or not, depending upon (1) fit-the de-
13.5 and 9.2, respectively, and for the older
gree of match, appropriateness, or suitability
group, 18.2 and 15.3, respectively, indicating
of response to stimulus-and (2) originality- that in both age groups the majority of re-
the degree of elegance, cleverness, and/or sponses are popular, the percentage of low
novelty of response. Judges were in agreement quality responses is substantial, and the older
on 87% of the responses and forced agreement age group produces a higher percentage of
on 11% and consulted additional judges on 2%. unusual responses of both high and low quality
Three nonoverlapping scores were then than the younger.
tabulated by summing across 16 items of cre-
The three nonoverlapping scores of cre-
ative thinking for each subject: usual or popu-
ative thinking and the composite total score
lar responses, unusual responses of low quality,
were subjected to separate two-way analyses
and unusual responses of high quality. The
of variance, age (sixth grade/twelfth grade) x
a coefficients of these scores were .75, .54,
sex. Means and standard deviations (in pa-
and .68, respectively, for the sixth graders and
rentheses) and F ratios for age are presented
.83, .42, and .84 for the high school seniors.
in table 1. The overall superiority of the older
Tests were administered in a single session to group resulted from the difference on unusual
groups of 35 subjects, with two examiners in
each room. responses only. Girls were higher than boys
on the popular score only, F(1,238) = 11.11,
Results p < .01. This sex difference was qualified by
an interaction with age, F = 6.45, p < .05.
The popular score correlated with the Comparisons of the means of the four sub-
high quality score, .28 (p < .01) and .48 (p
TABLE 1
< .001) for the younger and older groups, re-
spectively. The low quality score correlated MEANS, STANDARD DEVIATIONS, AND F RATIOS
with the high quality, .40 and .48 (p's < .001) BY AGE OF FOUR RESPONSE TYPES
for the younger and the older group, respec-
tively. Popular and low quality scores were Response
correlated .33, p < .001, and -.02 for the Type Sixth Grade Twelfth Grade F Ratio
younger and older groups, respectively. ThePopular.... 46.67 (13.65) 46.66 (17.70) .33
multiple regression of these two predictors onLow quality 6.21 ( 4.39) 10.74 (10.59) 15.88**
the high quality score was .43 and .69, p's Highquality 9.14 (5.72) 12.72 (8.97) 11.09**
<.001, for
spectively. the younger and older groups, re. Total N.. 62.02 (18.05) 70.12 (25.34) 4.82*

Considerably higher correlations between NOTE.-SDs in parentheses.

scores are reported in the research literature *p <.05.
** p < .001.

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 Milgram et al. 387
groups indicated that twelfth-grade girls gave the distinction between associating to verba
more popular responses than sixth-grade girls stimuli in the word-association paradigm and
(51.13 vs. 46.74) while sixth-grade boys gave producing ideas to stimuli (verbal and even
more popular responses than twelfth-grade nonverbal) in the creativity paradigm. Word
boys (46.62 vs. 40.33). These trends resulted association is heavily influenced by linguistic
in a sex difference favoring girls at the older habits, which become more formalized and
age level (p < .05 by Scheff6), but not at the structured with age and result in an increase
younger. in popular and a decrease in unusual responses.
Ideational fluency is less influenced by verbal
Discussion habits and is more similar to verbal intel-
ligence.
The relationship between quantity and
quality of ideational output (a) supports theWhen we compare the responses of 18-
year-olds and 12-year-olds on verbal intel-
position of Mednick (1962) that production
ligence tests, we find the changes to be more
of many conventional responses is a prerequi-
site for the production of unusual responsesqualitative
of than quantitative. Older subjects
high quality, (b) extends this position by differ
dem-from younger primarily in the number
onstrating that unusual responses of low of high-level abstract and complex new ideas
qual-
acquired rather than in the number of ad-
ity are equally associated with quality respond-
ditional low-level ideas acquired. The same
ing, and (c) justifies the scoring for quantity
situation applies to creative thinking where
of response only, a more simple and reliable
procedure which yields approximately the the developmental trend is one of increased
same
results as scoring for quality. production of unusual ideas, some of which are
of high quality, rather than in the production
In their comprehensive survey of sex dif-
of more ideas that are relatively commonplace.
ferences, Maccoby and Jacklin (1974, pp. 110-
Developmental data of the present study sup-
114) reported that girls score higher than boys
port a cognitive rather than a verbal learning
on verbal tests of creative thinking. Inapproach
the to creative thinking.
present study, the first to examine sex dif-
ferences in quality of creative thinking, older
Reference Note
girls also produced more ideas, but not neces-
sarily more ideas of high quality. 1. Sheehy, M. S. A developmental and normative
A comparison of the developmental trendsstudy of word associations in children grades
one through six. Unpublished doctoral disser-
on verbal ideational fluency in creative think-
ing with those of word association and of ver-tation, Catholic University of America, 1964.
bal intelligence elucidates the nature of the
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1 One could argue that since word association typically permits only one association to a
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