Divergent thinking in young children

Divergent thinking (DT) can be defined as a thought process or thinking method that enables individuals to explore or to think in multiple directions (Guilford, 1956; Wang et al., 2017). As an important component of creativity, DT is considered to be particularly relevant to the generation of original or novel ideas (Runco & Acar, 2012) and thus, has received considerable research interest. However, available DT research focuses mainly on adults (e.g., Gilhooly et al., 2007) and sometimes, on school-age children (e.g., Van Dijk et al., 2020). There is a scarcity of research that specifically looked into DT in young children, even though recent studies have shown that DT emerges in children as early as one or two years of age (Hoicka et al., 2016, 2018). The primary aim of this thesis, therefore, was to provide insights into questions such as how young children come up with original ideas during DT and how DT develops in early childhood, which are currently understudied. To this end, a cohort of 107 children was followed for one and a half years, from the age of four to six years. At four measurement waves, children were measured on DT with the Alternative Uses Task (AUT; Gilhooly et al., 2007; Guilford, 1967); and at the last measurement wave, these children were also given an executive functions (EFs) battery of standard tests. To study how children come up with original ideas during DT, we first investigated the process of DT in young children (Chapter 2) by analyzing children’s thinking reports, which were obtained while children were performing the AUT. The cohort data on DT obtained at the first measurement wave were used in this study. The results indicated that top-down, effortful executive processes played a role in the generation of original ideas during DT. Therefore, a subsequent study examined specifically how top-down, effortful executive processes operate during DT (Chapter 3), using the cohort data on both DT and EFs obtained at the last measurement wave. To study how DT develops in children, the developmental trajectories of DT measures as derived from the AUT with age were modeled using the longitudinal data (Chapter 4). Next, apart from answering the two fundamental questions, this thesis aimed to contribute to applied research regarding fostering creativity in children and, in particular, to take up the challenge that the Chinese education system is currently facing in the implementation of creativity education in early childhood. For this purpose, a creativity intervention program, i.e., the Learn to Think program for Preschoolers (LTT-P), was designed and assessed with a quasi-experiment with pre- and posttests in the specific context of Chinese education (Chapter 5).