An adapted coding scheme for measuring divergent thinking strategies with the alternative uses task in 4-year-olds

Description

Divergent thinking is important for innovation and problem solving. It involves processes of generating multiple solutions to an open-ended problem and is usually evaluated by fluency and originality with, for instance, the alternative uses task (AUT). Gilhooly and colleagues found that using some strategies could promote fluency and originality in adults. In this study, a coding scheme was developed to extract the strategies that adults use in divergent thinking. Not such effort has been done in early childhood which is deemed to be a golden period for developing divergent thinking, because children tend to be naturally more imaginative and curious. This study hence: (1) attempts to adapt Gilhooly et al.’s coding scheme for the use with young children; (2) evaluate the psychometric properties of the coding scheme. We first analyzed 10 4- to 7-year-olds’ divergent thinking protocols of the AUT (children were constantly asked how they came up with an idea) and adapted the coding scheme (with good interrater reliability; Kappa .65 for basic categories, and .71 when strategies were grouped). Second, we recruited 107 4-year-olds and tested them again with the alternative uses task. The results of a preliminary analysis of 50 children showed that relationships between strategies and fluency and originality were only partially consistent with Gilhooly et al’s study. A valuable finding is that children sometimes used imagination to generate new ideas, and imagination strategy influenced fluency significantly. Future analyses will be conducted to investigate the validity and reliability of the coding scheme using different methods.

Period	5 Aug 2018
Held at	Southern Oregon University, United States, Oregon
Degree of Recognition	International