Exploring the Domain Specificity of Creativity in Children: The Relationship between a Non-Verbal Creative Production Test and Creative Problem-Solving Activities

In this study, we explored whether creativity was domain specific or domain general. The relationships between students’ scores on three creative problem-solving activities (math, spatial artistic, and oral linguistic) in the DISCOVER assessment (Discovering Intellectual Strengths and Capabilities While Observing Varied Ethnic Responses)and the TCT-DP (Test of Creative Thinking-Drawing Production), a non-verbal general measure of creativity, were examined. The participants were 135 first and second graders from two schools in the Southwestern United States from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds. Pearson correlations, canonical correlations, and multiple regression analyses were calculated to describe the relationship between the TCT-DP and the three DISCOVER creative problem-solving activities. We found that creativity has both domain-specific and domaingeneral aspects, but that the domain-specific component seemed more prominent. One implication of these results is that educators should consider assessing creativity in specific domains to place students in special programs for gifted students rather than relying only on domain-general measures of divergent thinking or creativity.