Sing Lau

Creative Potential of School Children in Hong Kong: Norms of the Wallach-Kogan Creativity Tests and Their Implications

In this research, we normed the Wallach-Kogan Creativity Tests (Wallach & Kogan, 1965) for the school children in Hong Kong. A representative sample of 1418 students (148 1st graders, 155 2nd graders, 159 3rd graders, 163 4th graders, 162 5th graders, 160 6th graders, 162 7th graders, 159 8th graders, and 150 9th graders) was administered a Chinese version of the Wallach-Kogan Creativity Tests (WKCT), developed in a large-scale pilot study. There was some preliminary evidence of reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the WKCT. Results of the norming study showed that there was generally an increase with grade level in the mean of various indexes (Fluency, Flexibility, Uniqueness, and Unusualness) of creativity from Grade 1 to Grade 3 (individual administration mode) and from Grade 4 to Grade 9 (group administration mode) for both verbal tests and figural tests, besides a significant drop in the mean of the various indexes of creativity for figural tests in Grade 7. No gender differences in the indexes of creativity were found. The norms of this first norming study of the WKCT not only provide information about the creative potential of the school children in Hong Kong, but also facilitate future cross-cultural comparison of the scores of the WKCT in different cultures and societies

Assessing Ideational Fluency in Primary Students in Hong Kong

We tested 462 primary students (244 boys and 218 girls) in Grades 1, 2, and 3 from 20 primary schools in Hong Kong. Their ideational fluency was assessed by using 2 items each on 3 types of verbal tasks (instances, uses, and similarities) and 2 types of figural tasks (pattern meanings and line meanings) from the Wallach-Kogan tests. On the average, students generated about 20 instances, gave 9 alternative uses of a common object, listed 11 possible similarities between a pair of named objects, and gave 13 and 15 possible meanings for visual patterns and lines, respectively. Although boys scored consistently higher in ideational fluency than girls on verbal tasks, significant gender differences did not emerge for figural tasks. Significantly higher scores on ideational fluency were evident for students in higher grades especially for verbal tasks. The use of the Wallach-Kogan tests in the assessment of divergent thinking ability and creativity for Chinese children is discussed.

Perceived Creativity: Its Relationship to Social Status and Self-Concept Among Chinese High Ability Children

This study examined the connection between childrens perceived creativity and their social status and self-concept. Results from a group of high ability Chinese grade school children showed that peer-perceived creativity tended to associate positively with sociability-leadership, but at the same time, also positively with aggressive-disruptive and sensitive-isolated. It was also found to relate positively with peer liking of Like-Least and social impact, but somewhat negatively with social preference. Surprisingly, peer-perceived creativity was associated negatively with self-concept. With respect to group leader-perceived creativity, a similar pattern of relationships was found. Results from regression analysis showed that sociability-leadership was more predictive of peer-perceived creativity, whereas aggressive-disruptive was more predictive of group leader perceived creativity. These contrasting associations seemed to unveil different characteristics of a creative child in terms of social and self-perception.

Bicultural Effects on the Creative Potential of Chinese and French Children

This study examined possible bicultural effects on creative potential of children in four groups of Chinese and French children in Hong Kong and Paris. An international battery of widely used divergent measures (Wallach-Kogan Creativity Tests; WKCT) and newly constructed divergent-plus-integrative measures (Evaluation of Potential Creativity; EPoC) was established for assessment. Study 1 showed that most measures of WKCT and EPoC were reasonably high in reliability and they had expected correlations with the fluency scores of some subtests of Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Study 2 found some interestingly mixed bicultural effects favoring verbal divergent responses for French children and graphic integrative responses for Chinese children. Compared with Paris-French children, the bicultural Hong Kong-French children had significantly higher scores in figural fluency, figural flexibility, and figural uniqueness of WKCT (requiring only verbal divergent responses) but significantly lower scores in the graphic divergent-exploratory measure of EPoC. Compared with Hong Kong-Chinese children, the bicultural Paris-Chinese children had significantly higher scores in the graphic convergent-integrative measure of EPoC, but significantly lower scores in verbal fluency, verbal flexibility, figural fluency, figural flexibility, figural uniqueness, and figural unusualness of WKCT. Implications of the mixed bicultural effects in relation to the diverse creativity measures and children groups are discussed.

Psychological Adjustment of Creative Children: Perspectives from Self, Peer and Teacher.

Previous research in the literature on the relationships between creativity and psychological adjustment tended to use only one or two sources of creativity assessment and focus on a few aspects of adjustment. To examine creative children’s psychological adjustment more thoroughly, this exploratory study assessed children’s creativity from multiple sources (objective assessment, teachers and peers) and incorporated multiple aspects of adjustment (self-concept, popularity and sociability). The sample consisted of 53 primary school children. Findings revealed that 10% of the children were selected by both teachers and peers as creative, among whom half of these children were identified as creative based on their creativity scores. Those identified as creative based on the Wallach–Kogan creativity tests scores were more popular and perceived to possess sociability-leadership traits. Children perceived by teachers as creative saw themselves as better in academic, social and general self-concept. Finally, those perceived by peers as creative rated themselves as better in appearance self-concept. These findings provide a foundation for further research, and their implications are discussed.