Age-Related Changes and Reorganization of Creativity and Intelligence Indices in Schoolchildren and University Students

Abstract

Despite the lasting interest towards the relationship between intelligence and creativity, comparably less attention is paid to its age-related changes. Our paper considers the organization of fluid intelligence and psychometric indicators of creativity and is based on the experimental data obtained for children aged 11 (n = 99) and for young adults (n = 77). We used two figural and verbal tasks with and without time limit. We found that the age-related differences in creativity are dependent on the context and the type of testing. The young adults were different from the children, having higher indicators of verbal and figurative creativity, except for the originality of the drawings created within the Incomplete Figures test, and having considerably higher test results for fluid intelligence. These age-related differences, together with the discovered closer relationship between the creativity indicators in the young adults group compared to the children, might suggest insufficient contribution of the components of the executive control of information selection (inhibition, shifting, and updating), which had not fully formed in eleven-year-olds. The comparison of the various indicators of creativity suggests that the most complex task for the children was the composition of an original sentence by joining nouns from various semantic categories.

From mindreading to originality: Exploring the relationship between Theory of Mind and Creativity across the lifespan

“…Lately, Beghetto proposed the existence of an ideational‐code switching theory, according to which young children tend to move from ideas that are personally unique and meaningful to the production of ideas that are interpersonally original and appropriate as they are more able to take into account more complex sociocultural cues (Beghetto, 2007; Beghetto & Kaufman, 2007). In general, however, a large body of research has demonstrated that creative thinking also follows complex developmental paths and tends to unfold in line with the improvement of abstract thinking and reasoning during childhood and adolescence and through early adulthood (Razumnikova & Bakaev, 2022; Russ & Fiorelli, 2010; Urban, 1991).…”

A longitudinal study of the effect of individual and socio-cultural factors on students’ creativity

“…The above-mentioned approaches need to be further considered with age-related variables ( Sternberg, 1985 ; Razumnikova and Bakaev, 2022 ). This is because diverse cultural and contextual factors change constantly and influence individuals in distinct ways.…”