认知与发展心理学研究室知识库

儿童创造力差异的实质是心理学研究中的一个基本问题。传统的研究主要是从创造力产生的特殊过程，从创造性问题解决的角度来进行。一些研究者通过研究儿童创造力与信息加工速度的关系，试图从创造力的基本认知过程差异来考察。
本研究选取小学三年级到初中二年级儿童作为被试，采用用途创造力测验测查了他们的创造力水平，研究一主要选取了三个认知任务，来考察儿童创造力水平和信息加工速度的关系；研究二则进一步探查高低创造力儿童在视觉搜索任务和反应竞争任务中的表现，以此来从注意的角度进一步研究创造力在认知过程中的一般表现。获得了以下主要结论：
(1)  在复杂认知任务中，高创造力儿童的反应速度比低创造力儿童慢，在简单认知任务中，高创造力儿童的反应速度比低创造力儿童快。这和国外用成人做被试的研究结果一致。除了9-10岁组的低年龄组儿童，由于其各方面正处于一个发展初级阶段，他们在认知任务中主要体现出的是聚合思维，这也使得他们没有表现出和高年龄段儿童相似的创造力和信息加工速度关系。
(2)  在视觉搜索任务中，随着搜索特征的复杂，和系列大小的增加，高创造力组儿童和低创造力组儿童反应时的差异在逐渐缩小。也即，高创造力儿童在分心物增多的情况下，反应速度受到了影响。这里的13-14岁组儿童表现出不一样的情况。这可能和这个年龄段儿童正处在青春发育初期，正经历着生理和心理上的巨大变化，敏感和躁动，以致影响了认知任务中的表现。
(3)  在反应竞争任务中，在低负载的情况下，高创造力儿童组被试表现出明显的对与中心位置分心物的相容效应，也即，对不相容的分心物反应速度要慢于对相容分心物的反应速度。这一结果支持了中央凹理论，高创造力组儿童更易受到中心处分心物的影响，从而影响了他们的反应速度。而且，在低负载情况下，高创造力儿童即使在边缘位置，也表现出一定的相容效应，说明高创造力组儿童的注意资源也分配到了边缘位置，他们的视野更开阔。在高负载的情况下，高创造力儿童组对中心处分心物的相容效应消失了，甚至在13-14岁组儿童中出现了反方向的相容效应，这表明在高负载的情况下，高创造力儿童受到其他填充物的影响，而分心物的影响则减弱了，但总体的趋势仍然是高创造力儿童的反应时长于低创造力儿童组。
综上所述，高创造力儿童在复杂任务中更容易受到分心物的影响，以致影响了他们在信息加工中的速度。 本研究试图为从认知水平探讨创造力的一般认知本质提供实验依据，为在超常教育中鉴定高创造力儿童，为培养儿童的创造力提供理论指导。

The Experimental Study on the Relationship between Children’s Creativity and Speed of Information Processing and Visual Attention The nature of creativity  is an important issue in the study of psychology. Traditional researches, which are based mainly on the creative questions resolving, approach the problem only from the special processes of creativity happening. Some researchers try to explore the essential differences in creativity from the basic cognitive level, by studying the relationship between children’s different speed of information processing and creativity.  
The aim of this study was to do the followings 1) to examine the relationship between creativity and speed of information processing in  the elementary school  and  junior high school children;  2) to find out the difference between high creativity and low creativity children’s attention mechanism. The participants were children aged 9-16 year old. There were three cognitive tasks and two attention tasks. The results were follows:
1)  In a complex cognitive task, the response of children with high creativity  was slower  than  those with low creativity;  in simple cognitive tasks, children with high creativity reacted  faster than  those with  low creativity. This was consistent with  the adult subjects of the  previous  study results. In addition to 9-10 age group children, because their various aspects are in a primary stage of development, they mainly rely on  convergent thinking  in a cognitive task, which makes them not show similar reaction with older  children on the relationship between creativity and  the  speed of information processing  
2) In the visual search task, with the search features becoming complex, and the size increasing, the high creativity group of children and children  group  with low creativity was different in reaction time, and this difference were gradually narrowing. That is, highly creative children were affected according to the number of distractors. Here 13-14 years old group showed a different situation. It may be because they are in early puberty  and are more  sensitive and  agitated, which affect  the performance of cognitive tasks.
3)  In response  to  competition task, in the case of low load, high-creativity  group showed  the  obvious  compatibility effect  when  were  distracted from  the center of things, that is, their reaction speed to the incompatible distractors showed slower than to  the  compatibility distractors.  Consistent with  the theory of the central concave, high-creativity group of children  are  more vulnerable to the impact of central distractors, which affect their speed of response.  On low  load conditions, high creativity of children even in the periphery also showed  some compatibility effect, indicating the  attention resources  of  high  creative  children  were  allocated to the marginal position  and  they  showed  more open vision. In the case of high load condition,  the  compatibility effect  of  high-creative  children  to central distractors disappeared.  The 13-14 aged groups even showed the opposite direction of the compatibility effect, which indicates that on high load conditions, high creative children were affected by other filling materials and the effect of distractors is weakened. However, the total trend still is that the response time of high creative children is longer than that of low creative children.  
Above all, the high creative children more tend to be affected by distractors which results in low information processing speed. The present study attempts to explore the general cognitive nature of creativity from the cognitive level, to provide experimental basis for the identification of the extraordinary creative children in higher education and to provide theoretical guidance to foster children's creativity.