Convergent and Divergent Measurement of Creativity in Children

Abstract

Fourth through sixth grade children were given two types of creativity measures—divergent measures in which the child named all the ideas he could that met a simple requirement, and convergent measures, adaptations of Mednick's Remote Associates Test, in which he attempted to find one word that was associatively related to each of three others. Divergent and convergent measures shared little variance, and the latter were strongly correlated with IQ and achievement. Moreover, convergent items requiring production of the correct association were strongly related to items requiring only recognition. It was argued that in children Remote Associates performance depends on individual differences other than the size of the associative repertoire.

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