Johannes Brandl
Affiliation: University of Salzburg
Category: Philosophy
Keywords: creativity, false belief task, pretend play, divergent thinking, cognitive development
Date: Wednesday 3rd of September
Time: 15:30
Location: Room 232 (232)
View the full session: Creativity
Research on children's cognitive development has identified several factors that may have a positive or negative impact on their creativity (see Russ & Fiorelli 2010; Beloyianni et. al. 2024). In this talk, I will reflect on these findings by focusing on two promising lines of research: On the one hand, studies of pretend play provide insights into creative imagination (see Carruthers 2002, Chylińska and Gut 2020). On the other hand, an increase in divergent thinking has been linked to success in explicit false belief tasks (Suddendorf & Fletcher-Flinn 1997, 1999; Bijvoet van den Gerg & Hoicka 2014).
Given the age difference between early pretend play at around 2 years of age and success in explicit false belief tasks at around 4 years of age, a plausible hypothesis is that false belief understanding provides a kind of boost to creative thinking. But how exactly should we understand this hypothesis? How might false belief understanding enhance our creative powers?
To explore this question, I will draw on the "minimal theory of creative ability" (MTCA) proposed by Stevenson et al. 2021. In their view, an increase in creativity could be explained as an increase in intelligence or an increase in expertise (or both). I will first outline these two possible ways of fleshing out the hypothesis that false belief understanding enhances creative thinking, and then consider how to decide between these two options.
Stevenson et al. propose their theory with the goal of measuring individual differences in creative ability at all levels. By considering an ability to be creative if its results are original and useful in some way, they hope to measure the creativity needed to solve a soduko (mini-c creativity) as well as to make great leaps in art or science (big-c creativity). What makes their theory minimal is the idea that at no point do we need to appeal to a "special creative talent or ability, nor is there a specialized (brain) area for being creative" (Stevenson et. al., p. 4). Only two things are needed: intelligence and expertise.
Regarding intelligence, they emphasize that a whole range of cognitive abilities may be relevant. These include associative and analogical reasoning, visual and spatial abilities, and metacognitive skills. With respect to expertise, they emphasize its domain specificity. Creativity may require expertise in using language, in playing competitive games, or in making scientific observations.
A widely used measure of creativity that is easy to administer to young children targets the ability to think divergently. For example, in the Unusual Box Test, children are asked to play with a box that has different features (e.g., holes, ledges, strings, etc.) and a number of objects that are unfamiliar to the child. The child's behavior is then measured with a fluency score and an originality score. Interestingly, studies with 3-4 year old children have shown a positive correlation between high scores on the Unusual Box Test and high scores on tests related to pretend play. (see Bijvoet-van den Berg & Hoicka 2014).
Divergent thinking has also been tested by asking children to name or show ways in which they could play with different objects (e.g., a newspaper, a cup, a towel.) Using this paradigm, Suddendorf et al. were able to show in a longitudinal study that performance on the false belief task was significantly correlated with the ability to search one's own mind for answers in a divergent thinking task. (see Suddendorf and Fletcher-Flinn 1999).
From these data, we can conclude that understanding false beliefs has an enhancing effect on children's creative abilities. The question now is what might explain this effect.
Suddendorf and Fletcher-Flinn suggest that a common factor responsible for success in the false belief task and the increase in divergent thinking is a cognitive advance, namely the acquisition of a meta-representational ability. This ability allows children not only to attribute to others a belief that conflicts with their own, but also to scan their own knowledge base beyond areas of immediately activated mental content. Following this explanation, we might conclude that understanding false beliefs marks a major change in our intelligence, and that this change provides a boost to our creativity. Let us call this the intelligence-boost hypothesis.
Alternatively, we can think of pretend play as a domain in which children acquire a specific form of expertise. This includes the expertise to act out scenarios that are likely to induce false beliefs in others. For example, when children pretend to be asleep as realistically as possible, they acquire expertise that they can use to deceive others. Following this line of thought, we might conclude that understanding false beliefs has only an indirect effect on our creativity. It promotes realistic deception, and it is this domain-specific expertise that might then explain an increase in creative thinking. Let us call this the expertise-boost hypothesis.
These two hypotheses are not contradictory. However, there is a question that needs to be addressed when trying to combine them: Can we expect an intelligence boost to occur independently of an expertise boost? Since this seems unlikely, the question arises whether faking is only one domain of expertise that promotes creativity, or whether expertise in other domains may also serve this purpose.