The Effects of Task‐Specific Divergent‐Thinking Training

ABSTRACT Although there is a growing body of evidence indicating that divergent‐thinking skills may be very task specific, there has been no research testing how narrowly divergent‐thinking training can be targeted. Seventy‐nine seventh‐grade students received training in poetry‐relevant divergent‐thinking skills. These subjects and a matched control group later wrote poems and stories, the creativity of which was judged by experts. There was a significantly greater impact on poetry‐writing creativity. Implications for creativity theory and training programs are discussed. Numerous research reports (Baer, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994a, 1994b, in press‐a; Runco, 1987, 1989) have shown that the skills underlying creative performance may be quite task specific, and this suggests possible limitations on the potential benefits of divergent‐thinking training. One response to this task‐specific understanding of divergent thinking has been to design divergent‐thinking training programs that include practice in a wide range of task‐specific divergent‐thinking skills. This approach has been shown to have a general effect of enhancing creativity in diverse domains (Baer, 1988, 1992, 1993). An alternate approach would be to target training to specific kinds of creativity; however, there has been no research investigating just how narrowly such divergent‐thinking training can be targeted. The present investigation was designed to test what effect divergent‐thinking training focusing on a single task would have on creative performance on that task and on a different, but closely related, task. The larger goals were (a) to help creativity researchers better understand the nature of divergent thinking as it impacts creative performance and (b) to be of practical value in helping educators design training programs better suited to specific training objectives. Seventh‐grade students were trained in divergent‐ thinking skills hypothesized to be related to poetry — writing creativity. Following this training, trained subjects and a matched sample of untrained subjects wrote both poems and stories in their regular English classes. Poems and stories were judged for creativity by experts who did not know the subjects. It was predicted that training in poetry‐relevant divergent thinking would result in a greater increase in creativity on a poetry‐writing task than on a story‐writing task.