Tests of creativity applications of creativity tests and issues in ability testing

Tests of creativity applications of creativity tests and issues in ability testing-

Creativity definition, Creativity Concepts, three types of creativity, creativity theory, flow psychology, imagination.

Development and Application of Tests of creativity-Traditional Areas of Psychometric Study, creative process,divergent thinking ad convergent thinking,Fluency, Originality, Flexibility, Elaboration.

Major approaches to DT assessment.

psychometric evidences, personality scales psychology, big five personality, Measurement of creativity, Research on creative talent . creative achievement, brainstorming

issues in ability testing, several studies, and cultural diversity.

1. TESTS OF CREATIVITY APPLICATIONS ISSUES IN ABILITY TESTING Nidhin Chandrasekharan M.Sc . Applied Psychology Department of Psychology Kerala University

2. Creativity is regarded as one of the most complex of human behaviors. The existence of creativity as a modern term emerged from the results of the pioneering efforts of Guilford (1950) and Torrance (1962, 1974). According to Cook (1998) creativity is a divine quality, serendipitous activity, planned luck, endurance and a method.

3. According to Runco & Sakamoto (1999) creativity can be influenced by a wide array of social, developmental and educational experience that leads to creativity in different ways in a variety of fields . Guilford and Torrance were psychometric theorists and they attempted to measure creativity from a psychometric viewpoint . (Sternberg, 2006).

4. CREATIVITY DEFINITION According to Andriopoulos (2000) creativity has been perceived in different ways as a mental ability, a process and a human behavior . Martins & Terblanche (2003) States that creativity as group of meanings concentrates on individuals’ intellectual abilities and personality traits and other definitions center attention on the products themselves regarding creative outcomes and qualities. Creativity is commonly regarded as the production of novel and useful ideas or problem solutions (Sternberg & Lubart , 1999; Dewett, 2004; Amabile et al., 2005; Woerkum et al., 2007)

5. CREATIVITY CONCEPT Creativity includes two dimensions. N ovelty notion : It is a phenomenon in everyday life and therefore anyone can be creative as an essential aspect of his/her contribute to the business environment and everybody has to be involved in creative processes. Usefulness notion : which refers to material or practical methods of assessing the usefulness of novel ideas (Shalley et al., 2004). Although there is no an agreement about where creativity is situated in a process, a product, or a person, there is agreement about creative work involving both the concepts new and useful ( Petrowski , 2000).

6. Creativity includes two principles ‘problem finding ’ , and ‘problem solving’, and creativity needs several skills and talents. Thus, creative thinking is not conventional and requires modifying or rejecting existing ideas ( Herbig & Jacobs, 1996). The importance of creativity because of its ability to yield novel and proper ideas to solve complex problems, to increase efficiencies and to enhance overall effectiveness ( Diliello & Houghton, 2008). Similarly, Dewett (2004) identified that individual creativity has two general facets which are creative efforts and creative outcomes . Individual creativity can be defined as “a person’s ability to think beyond the obvious and produce something novel and appropriate” Nayak, (2008).

7. Creativity can be divided into three types and they are : creating something new, combining things together, and improving or changing things (Mikdashi, 1999).

8. It is regarded as a principal term in various fields ranging from the fine arts and architecture, to psychology, sociology, economics, science, engineering and lastly management. The application of creativity in marketing can provide added value to services or products, further than the tangible aspects or clear characteristics of these products or service ( Sadi & Al- Dubaisi , 2008).

9. CREATIVITY THEORY Amabile (1997) suggested that the componential theory of creativity indicates every individual has the capacity to engender at least slight creative work and some factors such as working environment and time may impact creative behavior level and its frequency. Based on this theory, individual creativity consists of three major components , each being necessary for creativity in any situation. They are : Expertise or domain skills Creativity thinking skills Intrinsic task motivation. Creativity occurs when individuals’ skills coincide with strong intrinsic motivation and this will lead to higher creativity when based on the higher level for each one of the three elements. Furthermore, individuals show differences in the level of the components of individual creativity (Amabile, 1996).

10. Although personality plays an important role in intrinsic motivation, the social environment can also impact on the level of intrinsic motivation of individuals at any time (Amabile, 1997). Hence , According to PerrySmith & Shalley (2003) creative individuals are those people who generate new methods to carry out their work by coming up with innovative ideas or novel procedures, and by reconfiguring existing ways into new alternative ways

11. Individuals may have high creativity if they have the personality traits of creative people. For example, intrinsic motivation of individuals includes satisfaction of curiosity, pleasure, personal challenges, self-expression and interest (Amabile, 1993 & 1997).

12. Intrinsic motivation refers to the main trait of creative people , and therefore creative people tend to follow intrinsic motivation, while extrinsic motivation tends to hinder creativity ( Runco , 2004). Expertise is knowledge : intellectual, procedural, and technical. In addition, expertise is considered as the basis of creative work, and therefore creative people do not create novel ideas from nothingness, but those new ideas start from domain-relevant knowledge and a set of developed skills (Simonton, 2000).

13. Expertise in any activity is an essential element for producing new ideas, opposed to existing ideas and that requires preceding knowledge of that activity. Cognitive style means how individuals determine problems and provide the solutions for those problems and their ability to merge existing ideas to produce novel amalgamations ( Kirton , 1989 ). Thus, cognitive style indicates the level of individuals’ imagination and their flexibility in facing problems (Munoz- Doyague et al., 2008).

14. Development and Application of Tests of creativity

15. Traditional Areas of Psychometric Study Psychometric methods in creativity research are typically grouped into four types of investigations: creative processes personality and behavioral correlates of creativity characteristics of creative products and attributes of creativity-fostering environments. Unlike the more recent development of systems theories and multidisciplinary approaches, which consider varied perspectives, the psychometric approach generally studied each of the four aspects in isolation .

16. Creative Processes Researchers have used psychometric measures of creative process extensively for decades, and they remain a popular measure of creative process and potential. Assessing creative processes is also evident in our schools (Sawyer, 2015).

17. DT (Divergent Thinking) Kaufman, Plucker , and Baer (2008) have noted that it is one of the great ironies of the study of creativity that so much time and energy have been devoted to the use of a single class of assessments . In fact, not only has the most energy been expended on DT tests but almost all of the earliest tests of DT remain in wide use in creativity research and education to this day . These include Guilford’s (1967) Structure of the Intellect (SOI) divergent production tests, Torrance’s (1974, 2008) Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT), and Wallach and Kogan’s (1965) and Getzels and Jackson’s (1962) DT tasks.

18. Fluency, Originality, Flexibility, Elaboration For example, if a person were trying to decide what to buy as a birthday present for her brother, she could come up with as many ideas for presents as possible (fluency ), presents that no one else would think of (originality ) a list of different types of presents he may like (flexibility ) or a list of the different basketball-related presents he might like ( elaboration) However , in this example, as in life, choices have to be made eventually, and evaluative (convergent) thinking must be done to select the actual gift to be purchased.

19. Major approaches to DT assessment. For example, the SOI DT battery consists of several tests that ask participants to exhibit evidence of divergent production in several areas, including divergent production of semantic units ( e.g., listing consequences of people no longer needing to sleep), of figural classes (finding as many classifications of sets of figures as possible ), and of figural units (taking a simple shape and elaborating on it as often as possible).

20. Other examples include the Sketches task (fluency with figural units ) in which participants draw as many pictures as possible given a specific shape, such as a circle the Alternate Letter Groups task (flexibility with figural classes ) which requires participants to, given a set of letters, form subgroups of letters according to the figural aspects of the letters the Associations task (originality with semantic transformations ) I n which a person, given two words, finds a third word that links the two (e.g., movie and fishing are linked by reel).

21. TTCT Over the course of several decades, Torrance (1974) refined the administration and scoring of the TTCT, which may account for its enduring popularity. The battery includes Verbal and Figural tests that each include a Form A and Form B that can be used alternately. Verbal subtests include Asking, Guessing Causes, Product Improvement, Unusual Uses,1 Unusual Questions, and Just Suppose. The first three verbal subtests provide a picture to be used as a stimulus . For example, the image might be an self gazing at the reflection in a pool of water with participants asked as many questions as they can about the image; guess causes for what made the image come to be; and guess the consequences that will result from the image. The other four verbal subtests are independent and do not rely on an external stimulus. For Product Improvement, participants are given a toy and asked for different ways it could be improved.

22. There are three Figural subtests consisting of Picture Construction, Picture Completion, and Lines/Circles . Picture Construction requires participants to make a picture out of a basic shape whereas the Picture Completion subtest provides a partially complete picture and asks participants to finish and name the drawing. The Lines/Circles subtest provides participants with a either a set of lines or circles to modify and shape.

23. The most appreciable difference between the batteries lies in the conditions in which students take the tests. Wallach and Kogan (1965) supported gamelike , untimed administration of DT tasks that they believed allows creativity to be measured distinctly from intelligence as a result of the creation of “ a frame of reference which is relatively free from the coercion of time limits and relatively free from the stress of knowing that one’s behavior is under close evaluation ” This constraint-free administration is in contrast to the testlike , timed procedures used with most other DT measures. Admittedly , much of this foundational work on creative assessment is old. However, it is important to keep in mind because it serves as the foundation of current practices.

24. Psychometric evidence Evidence of reliability for the SOI, TTCT, Wallach and Kogan , Getzels and Jackson, and similar tests is fairly convincing (e.g., Torrance, 1981; Williams, 1980), but the predictive and discriminant validity of DT tests has mixed support (cf. Bachelor, 1989; Clapham , 1996; Cooper, 1991; Thompson & Anderson, 1983). However , the perceived lack of predictive validity (Baer, 1993, 1994; Gardner, 1993; Weisberg, 1993) has led some researchers and educators to avoid the use of these tests and continues to serve as a lightning rod for criticisms of the psychometric study of creativity. However , one important caveat is that it is not universally accepted that psychometric measures of creative processes have poor predictive power . In fact, several studies provide at least limited evidence of discriminant and The Creative Person A second major area of activity involves assessments of creative personality. Measures focusing on characteristics of the person typically focus on self-report or external ratings of past behavior or personality characteristics .

25. Personality scales. Instruments intended to measure personality correlates of creative behavior are generally designed by studying individuals already deemed creative and then determining their common characteristics. These traits are then used as a reference for other children and adults under the assumption that individuals who compare favorably are predisposed to creative accomplishment.

26. Such measures are quite common in creativity research and include the Group Inventory for Finding Talent and Group Inventory for Finding Interests (see Davis, 1989 ) T he Self Report of Creative Traits ( Runco , Acar , & Cayirdaga , 2017 ), NEO-Five Factor Inventory ( McCrae & Costa, 1997 ) W ork undertaken at the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research ( Hall & MacKinnon , 1969; MacKinnon , 1978 ), S pecific scoring dimensions of the Adjective Check List ( Domino, 1994; Gough, 1979 ), The Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire ( Cattell, Eber, & Tatsuoka , 1970 ), The Creative Personality Scale ( Kaufman & Baer, 2004 ) which consists of twenty items selected from the International Personality Item Pool (Goldberg, 1999).

27. After analyzing research that relied on these and related instruments, Davis (1992) concluded that personality characteristics of creative people include A wareness of their creativity, Originality, Independence, Risk-taking, Personal energy, C uriosity , Humor , Attraction to complexity and Novelty , Artistic sense, Open-mindedness , Need for privacy, and Heightened perception. Similarly , Feist (1998) found consistently that creative people tend to be “Autonomous , Introverted , Open to new experiences, Norm doubting , Self-confident , Self-accepting , Driven , Ambitious , Dominant , Hostile , and Impulsive ” (p. 299), with openness, conscientiousness, self-acceptance, hostility, and impulsivity having the largest effect sizes. These studies mirror the results of other, recent studies and reviews of the literature (e.g., Batey & Furnham , 2006; Qian, Plucker , & Shen, 2010).

28. BIG FIVE

29. Additionally, within the personality psychology research field, the Big Five (McCrae & Costa, 1997) has become more accepted as explaining human personality. Within creativity, a meta-analysis has found that Big Five personality traits have stronger correlations to domain-general measures of creative self-beliefs than domain-specific ( Karwowski & Lebuda , 2015). Of the Big Five personality traits, openness to experience was the most strongly related to creative self-beliefs ; only neuroticism had a negative correlation (although this was weak). A lthough DeYoung (2015) points out that openness to experience itself has at least two distinct yet related factors: intellect and openness. These can also be broken into intellectual engagement, explicit cognitive ability.

30. Measurement of creativity Research on creative talent One of the major developments in psychological testing since midcentury concerns the measurement of creativity. Thurstone (1951) emphasized distinctiom and provided a provocative, and certain perceptual tendencies in creative behavior. Thurstone also observed creativity toward novel ideas and that creative solutions are more likely to occur during periods of relaxed, dispersed attention than during periods of active concentration on problem. Creativity, long regarded as the prime quality in artistic production, is coming more and more to be recognized as a basis for scientific achievement as well.

31. Creative Achievement Although tests of divergent production, such as those Guilford and Torrance, probably come close to measuring the essential aspects of creativity, other abilities are undoubtedly needed for effective creative achievement, especially in the sciences. Divergent production phase eventually followed by critical evaluation. It is thus apparent that creative achievement whether in science, engineering, art, music, or other fields of human endeavor requires a complex pattern of aptitudes and personality traits appropriate to the particular field.

32. Brainstorming Creativity is stimulated by the temporal separation of the productive and evaluative phases of creativity activity. A critical, evaluative attitude at an early stage of creative production may be seriously thwart the development of new ideas, But critical evaluation is to be only temporarily deferred, not permanently abolished.

33. Psychological Issues in Ability Testing

34. Longitudinal studies of children’s intelligence An important approach to the understanding of the construct “intelligence” is through longitudinal studies of the same individuals over long periods of time . Intelligence believed to be a largely an expression of heredity potential each IQ was expected to remain very nearly constant throughout life. Any observed variation on retesting was attributed to weaknesses in the measuring instrument, either inadequate reliability or poor selection of functions tested. With increasing research it is realized that IQ itself is both complex and dynamic .

35. Stability of intelligence test performance One explanation for the increasing stability of intelligence test scores with age is provided but the cumulative nature of intellectual development. Environmental stability has a key role in development of most persons. Role of prerequisite learning skills on subsequent learning. Prerequisite learning covers not only intellectual skills as the acquisition of language and of quantitative concepts, but also attitudes, interests, motivation. Problem solving styles, reactions to frustration, self concepts and other personality characteristics.

36. Instability of intelligence test performance Drastic change in family structure or home conditions, adoption into a foster home, severe or prolonged illness, and therapeutic or remedial programs are examples of the type of events that may alter the child’s subsequent intellectual development . Individual’s emotional and motivational characteristics.

37. Intelligence in early childhood The assessment of intelligence at the two extremes of the age range presents special theoretical and interpretive problems. The infant first discovers he/she can affect environment. Environmental mastery leads to goal directed activities Toy games There is a key role in parental contacts in the early childhood for children’s intellectual development.

38. Problems in the testing adult intelligence Individual differences and age. Lack of knowledge Each time and place fosters the development of skills appropriate to its characteristic demands. Within the lifespan, these demands differ for the infant, the schoolchild, the adult indifferent occupations, and the retired septuagenarian

39. Cultural diversity

40. REFERENCES 1. American Educational Research Association., American Psychological Association ., National Council on Measurement in Education., & Joint Committee on Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (U.S .). ( 2014). Standards for educational and psychological testing. Washington, DC : American Educational Research Association. 2. Anastasi A., & Urbina, S. (2017). Psychological Testing (7 ed.). Noida: Pearson India Education Services Pvt. Ltd. 3. Singh,A.K . ( 2019).Tests, Measurements and Research methods in Behavioural Sciences ( 6 th edn ). Bharati Bhawan Publishers & Distributors, New Delhi.

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