Figural Creativity, Intelligence, And Personality In Children

To study relationships among figural creativity, intelligence, and personality, 30 measures hypothesized to be relevant were obtained for 196 children in grades 4, 5, and 6. Principal components extracted from the intercorrelations were rotated to the normalized varimax criterion. Nine factors were interpreted: A, chronological age and general information; B, personal adjustment; C, sex-typing; D, school achievement and mental ability; E, divergent production of figural implications; F, intolerance of ambiguity; G, production of figural systems; H, preference for complexity; and I, self-confidence. It was concluded that, even in children this young, separable orthogonal traits of figural divergent thinking could be delineated, and that "creativity" is not a unitary ability.