“My Brain Said That … ”: A Qualitative Study of Sources of Children’s Creative Ideas

Despite decades of research, the creative process remains to be fully understood, and most theories and empirical evidence focus on adults' creativity. Without understanding children's creative processes, the generalizability of these theories is questionable, which is crucial for teaching, learning, and parenting. However, studying children's creative processes is challenging because of their still-developing meta-cognition, which is an essential component of the creative process. In this study, we conducted interviews with middle childhood-aged students (n = 30) after they completed four different types of divergent thinking tasks, examining the creative process during and beyond idea generation. Using inductive thematic analysis, we identified four main themes with associated subthemes, with Memory (experiences, knowledge, references, and personal and social interests) and Cognitive Strategies (evaluative processes and hypothetical thinking) as the primary themes. These data offer insight into how the main themes Memory and Cognitive Strategies reflect associative and executive processes, respectively, and the interplay between these in children's divergent thinking. Findings from this study revealed that children were able to explain their process of generating an idea in the vast majority of responses. Additionally, this work provides insight into improving creativity, methods of assessment, and our understanding of creativity development.