ICPE 2018 - International Conference on Psychology and Education
Abstract
The present study investigated the extent to which creative expressiveness in writing at age 9 could
be predicted by early human figure drawing ability and general cognitive ability, measured at age 4.
Participants (N=277) were members of the Twins Early Development Study, for whom measures of
human figure drawing and general cognitive ability were available at age 4 and a measure of creative
writing was available at age 9. Creativity was measured with the Consensual Assessment Technique,
which is a commonly used technique to estimate creativity of a product. Each story, based on three
pictures shown to children, was coded on 10 dimensions by five independent judges. Creative
Expressiveness score was created as a composite measure of dimensions that correlated highly with
creativity dimension. Human figure drawing ability, measured by The Draw-A-Child test at 4, was found
to be a weak but significant predictor of Creative Expressiveness at age 9 (r =.17). General cognitive
ability at 4 did not predict Creative Expressiveness in writing at 9. It is concluded that examining
individual differences in human figure drawing ability may provide a promising direction for exploring
the early antecedents of creativity throughout childhood