But they are having more fun than you.
Reckon your toddler is a budding artistic savant? Reckon again.
New research out of Austria’s University of Graz found that adults outperformed children on externally rated creativity, especially when it came to structured tasks.
Children, however, reported higher confidence and motivation, as well as lower anxiety and greater enjoyment.
According to the research team, who published their findings in PLoS One this month, there was a pervasive belief amongst adults that preschool aged children were naturally more creative thinkers.
“Children may engage with creative tasks in a more play-like manner reflecting high openness, and intrinsic motivation, thus enjoying the task without being overly concerned about the outcome,” the researchers wrote.
“Adults, in contrast, are more aware of their strengths and weaknesses [and typically more sensitive to external expectations and social evaluation, which may support goal-directed performance via metacognition and self-regulation but also increase worries and constrain risk-taking.”
To put the idea to the test, a sample of 92 preschoolers and 70 adults were asked to perform three creativity tasks with varying degrees of structure.
In the first, participants were given three minutes to find as many creative uses for a tin can as they could.
The second and third trials were drawing tasks. In the first of these two tasks, participants were given pens and paper and told to draw whatever they wanted. In the final one, they were asked to draw a fantasy animal which did not exist.
All creative “products” were blindly evaluated by five “experienced raters”.
Adults scored higher than children on novelty, effectiveness, and overall creativity for all three tasks, excepting novelty of the free drawing task.
A different picture emerged for measures of subjective enjoyment.
“While adults demonstrated higher creative ability in standardized tasks, children enjoyed the creativity tasks more, reported higher motivation and confidence, and showed lower anxiety,” the researchers said.
“They also reported more frequent creative engagement and a higher creative self-concept.
“These findings suggest that the common perception of young children as ‘more creative’ may stem less from their output quality and more from their affective-motivational experience and agentic action.”
Fake it till you make it, indeed!
Send your toddler’s drawings – and your story tips, while you’re there – to Holly@medicalrepublic.com.au.
