Joe Khatena

What Kind of Person Are You? A Brief Screening Device for Identifying Creatively Gifted Adolescents and Adults.

(the results of research) to a large class of 200 or more students. The plan was to have students respond to the instrument, explain the procedure used in developing it, have students score their own responses, and explain the underlying rationale and research basis for each item. Second, he was interested in developing for research purposes a brief, easily administered and scored test that could be used in classifying adolescents and adults for experimental groupings to facilitate his search for better ways of teaching creat i ve I y-gifted or creatively-oriented people.

Something About Myself: a Brief Screening Device for Identifying Creatively Gifted Children and Adults

The use of the autobiographical instrument as a screening device for the highly gifted has found support in the opinion and research of many in the field of creativity. Instruments in the form of checklists, questionnaires, and inventories calling for biographical data have been found to be one efficient way of identifying creative talent in general and creative scientific talent in particular (e.g. Taylor, 1958; Roe, 1963). More recent studies using the biographical inventory technique to predict success in artistic, literary and scientific creativity confirm this view (e.g. Schaefer and Anastasi, 1968; Taylor, Ellison and Tucker, 1969). The writer’s interest in self-reports as a means of predicting future behavior led him to construct a creativity checklist entitled Something About Myself (Khatena, 1970), based upon the rationale that creativity is reflected in the personality characteristics of the individual, in the kind of thinking strategies he employs, and in the products that emerge as a result of his creative strivings. It is the purpose of this paper to present data on the construction, administration and scoring procedures together with preliminary reliability, validity and normative data.

Vividness of Imagery and Creative Self Perceptions.

as they are affected by deliberate training for the creative output, fixed and variable time intervals and creative levels of hetrogenous groups of children and adults (Khatena, 1973). One study by Schmeidler (1965) who used a quantifiable version of the original ~alton’s breakfast table questionnaire (1880) found low positive correlation between imagery scores and a measure of creativity; and another by Gregory and Lindauer (1973) who found a significant positive correlation between participation in aesthetic activities and imagery arousal as measured by self rating scales relative to participation in English, Art, Music and Theatre, and to ease and vividness of imagery produced given 45 sensory words in the sense modalities of vision, sound, touch, taste and smell references, with imagery scores differentiating aesthetic participation scores. However

Relationship of autonomous imagery and creative self-perceptions.

107 Marshall University students were categorized as less, moderate, and more autonomous imagers according to the Gordon Test of Visual Imagery Control. More autonomous imagers obtained higher mean creative perception scores than moderate and less autonomous imagers, and moderate imagers obtained higher scores on creative perception than less autonomous imagers as measured by Something About Myself.

Repeated Presentation of Stimuli and Production of Original Responses

An analysis of the responses of 50 junior and senior men and women in undergraduate educational psychology classes using alternate forms of Onomatopoeia and Images as tests of originality and of 27 graduate students in a seminar on creative behavior using Form I of Sounds and Images and Form I of Onomatopoeia and Images shows increasing originality with each repetition of the stimuli. The break away from perceptual set for the production of original responses seems to be effective in both instances and the results support the present mode of presentation of Onomatopoeia and Images and Sounds and Images. Results also support the idea that original thought requires considerable effort.

Creative Imagination Imagery and Analogy

The magic and mystery of the imagination set in motion by creative energy have given articulation to our world, transforming reality to dreams and dreams to reality. William Blake saw it as &dquo;some source of spiritual energy&dquo; in whose exercise we experience in some way the activity of God. Samuel T. Coleridge regarded the imagination as an ability fo first importance since human beings involved in creative activities simulate in some way the creative act of God. More recently Bowra (1950) astutely observed the function of the imagination as a mysterious activity of the mind in the act of

TRAINING COLLEGE ADULTS TO THINK CREATIVELY WITH WORDS

100 college Ss were randomly assigned to 4 treatment groups of equal number and exposed to five creative thinking strategies. Practice increased the probability of the occurrence of original responses as measured by two scales of originality.

Major Directions in Creativity Research

I,ittle had been done to measure the creative thinking abilities of children, adolescents, and adults except in terms of ingenuity and originality (e.g., Guilford, 1967; Torrance, 1962). It seems as if the tack of a scientific model for the study of creativity hindered the development of this discipline. Although the spirit of the times had its own share in energizing such study, Guilford’s Presidential Address to the American Psychological Association in 1950 on the Structure of Intellect Model, with attention given to the hitherto neglected divergent thinking abilities within that model, appears to have lit the fuse for the explosion of knowledge and research in the area of creativity.

Autonomy of imagery and production of original verbal images.

90 college students (31 men and 59 women) were categorized as moderately autonomous, less autonomous (less highly controlled) and non-autonomous (highly controlled) imagers according to the Gordon Test of Visual Imagery Control. Moderately autonomous imagers produced significantly more original verbal images than less autonomous and non-autonomous imagers with less autonomous imagers scoring higher than non-autonomous imagers as measured by Onomatopoeia and Images. There were no significant sex main effects or interaction of autonomy of imagery level × sex.

Adolescents and the Meeting of Time Deadlines in the Production of Original Verbal Images

Definitions of creativity are many and none universally accepted (Torda, 1970). However, it is interesting to note that’ in one way or another they include one or several variables namely person, process, products and press (Rhodes, 1961). The matter of &dquo;press&dquo; is of importance to those who would manipulate environmental conditions to trigger creative behavior and mental functioning and evidence of this is available (e.g. Torrance, 1963, 1965ab). -