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2 - Creativity in Young Children's Thought
- from SECTION ONE - CREATIVITY AND REASON IN CHILDHOOD AND THE SCHOOLS
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- By Susan A. Gelman, University of Michigan, Gail M. Gottfried, University of Michigan
- Edited by James C. Kaufman, University of Connecticut, John Baer, Rider University, New Jersey
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- Book:
- Creativity and Reason in Cognitive Development
- Published online:
- 05 February 2016
- Print publication:
- 15 February 2016, pp 9-32
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Summary
Consider the following examples:
• Adam (age two and a half) was taking a bath, and his mother said, “I'm going to get the shampoo” as she reached for the bottle of shampoo, which had a cap in the form of Winnie-the-Pooh's head. Adam replied, without missing a beat, “I want sham-piglet,” pointing at the bottle of bath bubbles, which had a cap in the form of Piglet's head. (Gelman, 2003, p. viii)
• A conversation between a child (age two years) and her father:
sharon: “I pretend the sand is a birthday cake!”
father: “The sand is a birthday cake?”
sharon: “I preTEND.” (Gottfried, unpublished data)
• “The water is the fish's house.” (Sophie, age three years; we thank Sophie's father, Andrew Gelman, for supplying this example)
• “Do animals like pomegranates?” (Abe, age two years, 11 months; Gelman, 2003, p. 205)
Although this chapter concerns creativity, we do not consider ourselves to be “creativity researchers” – that is, we do not study creativity per se. Rather, we are developmental psychologists who study children's concepts. However, we argue in this chapter that young children's ordinary thought entails a considerable degree of creativity. Specifically, children organize knowledge in creative ways, from a very young age. Our main goal is to make this case with four key illustrations (paralleling the preceding examples), including (1) nonconventional language use, (2) pretense, (3) theory construction, and (4) generalizing from specifics. Although some of these cases will be familiar to those who study creativity (e.g., nonliteral language use and pretense are prototypical examples of creativity in children and are linked to creative endeavors for adults, such as poetry or theater), others are not so readily understood as displaying creativity. So part of our task is to explain why and how we consider these commonplace cognitive activities to be embedded in a creative approach to knowledge. Additionally, we hope to raise some more general questions concerning what counts as creativity, the developmental fate of creativity, and the relation between creativity and cognition more broadly.
First, a note on what we mean by “young children.” Our focus is on children who can talk but have not yet begun formal schooling, primarily two- to five-year-olds. This age group is of particular interest for several reasons.
12 - Creativity in Young Children's Thought
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- By Susan A. Gelman, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Gail M. Gottfried, Pomona College, Claremont, California
- Edited by James C. Kaufman, California State University, San Bernardino, John Baer, Rider University, New Jersey
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- Book:
- Creativity and Reason in Cognitive Development
- Published online:
- 19 January 2010
- Print publication:
- 29 May 2006, pp 221-243
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Summary
Adam (age 2-1/2) was taking a bath, and his mother said, “I'm going to get the shampoo” as she reached for the bottle of shampoo, which had a cap in the form of Winnie-the-Pooh's head. Adam replied, without missing a beat, “I want sham-piglet,” pointing at the bottle of bath bubbles, which had a cap in the form of Piglet's head (Gelman, 2003, p. ⅷ).
A conversation between a child (age 2 years) and her father:
Sharon
“I pretend the sand is a birthday cake!”
Father
“The sand is a birthday cake?”
Sharon
“I preTEND.” (Gottfried, unpublished data)
Stephanie (age 3-1/2) had been playing with a set of Duplo blocks that included stylized animal faces. The dog and cat were nearly identical; only the cat had eyelashes. Later that day, Stephanie announced that “hes” don't have eyelashes; only “shes” have eyelashes. Stephanie's mother then asked her husband to come into the room and take off his glasses. “Look at Daddy,” she said. “Does he have eyelashes?” Stephanie looked right into his eyes (framed by dark eyelashes) and said, “No. Daddy's a ‘he,’ and ‘hes’ don't have eyelashes” (Gelman, 2003, p. ⅷ).
“Do animals like pomegranates?” (Abe, age 2;11; Gelman, 2003, p. 205).
Although this chapter concerns creativity, we do not consider ourselves to be “creativity researchers” – that is, we do not study creativity per se. Rather, we are developmental psychologists who study children's concepts. However, we argue in this chapter that young children's ordinary thought entails a considerable degree of creativity.
Using metaphors as modifiers: children's production of metaphoric compounds
- GAIL M. GOTTFRIED
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- Journal:
- Journal of Child Language / Volume 24 / Issue 3 / October 1997
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 01 October 1997, pp. 567-601
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Although much research has investigated children's use of metaphoric language, methodological concerns raise questions about the conclusions, and it remains unclear whether preschoolers can produce metaphors. These studies employed a new methodology to test children's ability to produce metaphors incorporated into metaphoric compounds. In two studies, 59 children aged 2;8–4;3, 63 children aged 4;4–6;1, and 34 adults participated in elicited production tasks. In Study 1, subjects in the COMPOUND condition corrected a puppet's incorrect compound labels for pictures that had metaphoric resemblances to other objects (e.g. ‘leaf-bug’ for a bug shaped like a stick). Subjects in the NON-METAPHORIC condition heard incorrect compounds describing pictures without obvious metaphoric resemblance (e.g. ‘leaf-bug’ for a round black beetle). Children in the REVERSAL condition heard compounds with nouns reversed (e.g. ‘bug-leaf’ for the stick-bug) to discover whether children distinguished between the literal and metaphoric labels. Study 2 provided an additional test of children's metaphoric–literal distinction. Results showed that children as young as 3;0 produced intentional, appropriate metaphors incorporated into compound nouns when the stimuli and puppet's labels primed recognition of metaphoric similarity and compound production. Moreover, children showed evidence of a distinction between literal and metaphoric labels. The data show that preschool children have an early ability to use metaphoric language but that significant developmental change occurs between the ages of 3;0 and 5;0 as well as beyond 5;0. Additionally, metaphoric language in preschoolers is not limited to single-word renamings.
Comprehending compounds: evidence for metaphoric skill?
- GAIL M. GOTTFRIED
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- Journal:
- Journal of Child Language / Volume 24 / Issue 1 / February 1997
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 01 February 1997, pp. 163-186
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Previous studies of children's comprehension of compound nouns show that three-year-olds can identify the appropriate referent for a compound when shown picture arrays that include salient distractors. The four studies presented here investigate comprehension of one kind of compound, metaphoric compounds (i.e. noun–noun compounds in which one noun expresses similarity to another object, as in catfish). Forty-four three-year-olds, 45 five-year-olds and 22 adults were shown a series of picture arrays and were asked to identify referents of various types of metaphoric compounds. The arrays included target pictures that had metaphoric resemblances based on shape (e.g. bug shaped like a stick) or on colour/pattern (e.g. shells with black and white stripes, like a zebra). Results showed that three- and five-year-olds can comprehend shape-based metaphoric compounds such as stick-bug, even when faced with salient distractors (e.g. a stick, a bug next to a stick). The younger children had some difficulty with colour-based compounds, such as zebra-shells. Overall, five-year-olds outperformed three-year-olds but performed significantly less well than adults. However, even at age 3, children did not show a general expectation to interpret the compounds literally.
13 - Essentialist beliefs in children: The acquisition of concepts and theories
- Edited by Lawrence A. Hirschfeld, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Susan A. Gelman, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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- Book:
- Mapping the Mind
- Published online:
- 04 August 2010
- Print publication:
- 29 April 1994, pp 341-366
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Summary
In their first few years of life, children are making sense of the world at two levels at once: at the fine-grained level of everyday object categories (deciding which things are trees and which are dogs and which are cookies), and at a broader level that some have called commonsense “theories.” Both are remarkable achievements. First, consider categorization. If children's vocabulary is any indication, by the age of 6 they have carved up the world into thousands of distinct categories (Carey, 1978). Many children undergo a vocabulary “explosion” at roughly 18 months of age (Halliday, 1975; McShane, 1980; Nelson, 1973), when the rate of acquisition suddenly rises exponentially. One child studied in detail by Dromi (1987) produced as many as 44 new words in one week, and roughly 340 new words in her first 7 months of speech. No other species acquires symbolic communication at this rate. Even studies that successfully teach apes to acquire sizeable vocabularies in sign language are incomparable, with no noticeable vocabulary explosion (e.g., after more than 4 years of exposure to sign language, Washoe acquired only about 132 signs; Gardner & Gardner, 1989).
At around the same time that children learn to classify individual entities and undergo rapid vocabulary growth, they are developing broad systems of belief about the world. Not only do children learn to identify certain objects as “dogs,” but they also learn that dogs belong to the class of animals, and that animals engage in characteristic biological processes such as growth, inheritance, and self-generated movement. Children are learning about physical laws such as gravity, mental states such as dreams, and social relationships within units such as families.