Delving into Creativity and Learning

Mathematical Creativity in Adults: Its Measurement and Its Relation to Intelligence, Mathematical Competence and General Creativity

“…Mathematical creativity showed a positive relationship with intelligence, mathematical competence, and general creativity, but only general creativity as well as numerical intelligence explained the unique variance of mathematical creativity, as shown by a multiple regression analysis. The positive relationship between intelligence and mathematical creativity in adults is in line with previous research in children and adolescents (e.g., Kroesbergen and Schoevers 2017 ; Karwowski et al 2020 ; Kattou et al 2013 ; Leikin and Lev 2013 ). Those studies have used a variety of different measurements as well as diverse samples; therefore, this association seems to be quite generalizable.…”

“…In line with the reviewed literature focusing mostly on children and adolescents, we expected to find a positive relationship between intelligence and mathematical creativity (e.g., Kroesbergen and Schoevers 2017 ; Kahveci and Akgul 2019 ; Kattou and Christou 2017 ), and differentiated relationships between the sub-facets of verbal, numerical, and figural intelligence and mathematical creativity. Further, we expected a positive relationship between mathematical competence and mathematical creativity (e.g., Chen et al 2006 ; Bahar and Maker 2011 ; Haavold 2016 ; Karwowski et al 2020 ; Schoevers et al 2018 ). Additionally, based on the discussed results (e.g., Lin and Cho 2011 ; Schoevers et al 2018 ), we expected general creativity to have a positive relationship with mathematical creativity in adults.…”

“…In the majority of studies, mathematical creativity is measured by more than one divergent thinking task to cover different fields of mathematics. Most common are tasks drawing on numerical, arithmetic aspects (e.g., “Provide as many different mathematical operations using the numbers 3, 4, 20, 24, 72 and the operation symbols +, −, ×, /, =”, Karwowski et al 2020 ) as well as tasks drawing on figural, geometric aspects (e.g., “Divide a square with a side length of 4 cm for any number of equal parts”, Karwowski et al 2020 ). The solutions to these problems are then scored in terms of fluency, flexibility, and originality.…”

“…However, there are still individuals who show high mathematical competence but perform poorly at creative mathematical thinking. Karwowski et al ( 2020 ) further examined the assumed necessary-but-not-sufficient link between mathematical competence and mathematical creativity in a large sample of sixth-grade elementary school students and first grade middle school students ( N = 2372) using NCA. The results of the analysis demonstrated a significant moderate-to-strong effect size, which indicated that high scores in mathematical creativity were hardly possible when the scores in mathematical competence were low.…”

A Reappraisal of the Threshold Hypothesis of Creativity and Intelligence

“…Moreover, these methods also suffer from problems such as imprecise false positive rates (Type I errors) and the assumption of a change in sign of the regression in two regions ( Simonsohn 2018 ). Besides, methods such as the quantile regression have been applied to investigate thresholds ( Dumas 2018 ; Karwowski et al 2020 ), although they do not provide a direct test of a threshold as the segmented regression analysis does.…”