Does Exploration Fuel Young Children’s Creative Problem-Solving during Play?

• In Event: Developmental Change in the Form and Function of Exploratory Learning

Abstract

Creativity is a vital 21st century skill (Lucas, 2016), and theoretical work posits that play is a natural context in which children naturally engage in exploration and creativity (Russ, 2016). Exploration during play likely leads to creativity, because when children explore they often exercise divergent thinking (generating multiple solutions). Exploration thus sets the stage for creative problem-solving since it requires both divergent thinking and convergent thinking (focusing on one solution) (Guilford, 1972). However, exploration can only result in creativity if the solutions generated are applicable to the problem (Carr et al., 2016). The current study examines how certain exploration behaviors are more likely to successfully lead to creative problem-solving during play.

One hundred and thirty 4- to 6-year-old children were asked to solve an 8-minute creative problem that relied on their exploration for a solution. In a task derived from the analogical reasoning literature (Daehler & Chen, 1993), children were asked to remove a ball from a tall jar using everyday objects like a rubber band, chopstick, and sticky clay. No single object could remove the ball, but multiple combinations of objects or manipulations of objects (e.g., changing the shape of the object) could. Children’s exploration behaviors were coded for manipulations (e.g., exploring object properties), as well as functional manipulations (manipulations that could lead to success), nonfunctional manipulations (manipulations that could not lead to success, such as attaching a clip to the middle of the chopstick), and manipulation chains (minimum of two manipulations of the same objects leading to an attempt). Two researchers double coded 30% of the data with an average kappa of 0.86.

We hypothesized that higher rates of manipulations, functional manipulations, and manipulation chains would be associated with success (i.e. retrieving the ball).

Fifty-five children (42%) successfully retrieved the ball. We conducted a series of binary logistic regression analyses and found that the number of manipulations (p = .02), functional manipulations (p < .01), and manipulation chain (p < .01) were each significant predictors of success on the task. For every increase of 1 manipulation the child’s odds of success increased by 4%, for every increase of 1 functional manipulation the child’s odds of success increased by 22%, and for every increase of 1 manipulation chain the child’s odds of success increased by 27%.

This study provides evidence that exploration is an essential component of creativity. Namely, we found a number of exploration behaviors exhibited during a creative problem-solving task resulted in significant differences on whether the problem was solved successfully. Moreover, not all exploration behaviors were equally useful as certain manipulations (functional) were more likely to lead to success than superfluous manipulations (nonfunctional). Success was also more likely after consecutive manipulations (chains). Whereas more research is needed to understand the relations between exploration and creative problem-solving, this work demonstrates the importance of how exploration of materials may enhance creative problem-solving skills during play.

Authors

• Natalie Evans, University of Virginia - Charlottesville
  Presenting Author

• Molly Schlesinger, Temple University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rachael Todaro, Temple University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Emily J Hopkins, University of Scranton
  Non-Presenting Author

• Roberta M Golinkoff, University of Delaware
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kathy A Hirsh-Pasek, Temple University
  Non-Presenting Author