Institute for Psychological Research, Leiden University, The Netherlands.
Dev Sci. 2013 Jan;16(1):2-12. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2012.01176.x. Epub 2012 Oct 8.
We examined developmental trajectories of creative cognition across adolescence. Participants (N = 98), divided into four age groups (12/13 yrs, 15/16 yrs, 18/19 yrs, and 25-30 yrs), were subjected to a battery of tasks gauging creative insight (visual; verbal) and divergent thinking (verbal; visuo-spatial). The two older age groups outperformed the two younger age groups on insight tasks. The 25-30-year-olds outperformed the two youngest age groups on the originality measure of verbal divergent thinking. No age-group differences were observed for verbal divergent thinking fluency and flexibility. On divergent thinking in the visuo-spatial domain, however, only 15/16-year-olds outperformed 12/13-year-olds; a model with peak performance for 15/16-years-old showed the best fit. The results for the different creativity processes are discussed in relation to cognitive and related neurobiological models. We conclude that mid-adolescence is a period of not only immaturities but also of creative potentials in the visuo-spatial domain, possibly related to developing control functions and explorative behavior.
我们考察了青少年时期创造性认知的发展轨迹。参与者（N=98）分为四个年龄组（12/13 岁、15/16 岁、18/19 岁和 25-30 岁），接受了一系列评估创造性洞察力（视觉；言语）和发散思维（言语；视空间）的任务。在洞察力任务上，两个年龄较大的组优于两个年龄较小的组。在言语发散思维的新颖性测量上，25-30 岁组优于两个年龄最小的组。在言语发散思维流畅性和灵活性方面，没有观察到年龄组差异。然而，在视空间领域的发散思维上，只有 15/16 岁组优于 12/13 岁组；一个以 15/16 岁为最佳表现的模型显示出最佳拟合。不同创造力过程的结果与认知和相关神经生物学模型有关。我们的结论是，青少年中期不仅是不成熟的时期，也是视空间领域创造力潜力的时期，这可能与发展控制功能和探索行为有关。
