EFFECTS OF THE SCAMPER TECHNIQUE ON ANXIETY AND CREATIVE THINKING OF INTELLECTUALLY GIFTED STUDENTS '

Transcription

1 Psychological Reporh, 1988, 63, O Psychological Reports 1988 EFFECTS OF THE SCAMPER TECHNIQUE ON ANXIETY AND CREATIVE THINKING OF INTELLECTUALLY GIFTED STUDENTS ' BRIZEIDA E. MIJARES-COLMENARES Mississippi State University WILLIAM G. MASTEN Douglas Uni/ied School District JOE R. UNDERWOOD Mississippi S&te Univenity Summary.-This study assessed the effect of the Scamper technique on creative thinking and rrait-anxiety of 27 junior high students. Effect size was large for flexibility and medium for trait anxiety which suggests Scamper may be useful to improve flexibility and reduce trait-anxiety. Impetus to scientific study of creative thinking by psychologists in recent years can be traced to Gullford (1967) and the Structure of Intellect. Divergent productions were viewed by Guilford as four components: fluency-the ready flow of ideas from one category to another, flexibihtythe changes in direction of thinlung, originality-the statistically infrequent, clever and remotely related responses, and elaboration-the filling out of ideas with details. Traditional schooling concentrates mostly on developing such skills as language, mathematics, and logical thought or convergent thinking. This situation exists even for intellectually gifted children. Schooling for the gifted often concentrates on enrichment in the sciences, mathematics, and foreign languages. Less often are there programs that teach creative or divergent thinking. If we are interested in promoting the cognitive development of gifted students, it is important to stimulate divergent as well as convergent thinking. The effect of anxiety on cognitive functioning has been widely demonstrated. In addition, there is considerable research interest on the effect of anxiety on creative or divergent thinking. This area is important because high levels of anxiety may retard the creative process (Guilford, 1977; Smith & Carlsson, 1983) while moderate anxiety may enhance creative thinking (Smith & Carlsson, 1983). The probability of helping gifted students develop their creative talents may be enhanced if the effect of factors such as anxiety can be identified and controlled. There is some evidence 'Request reprints Cmm William G. Masten, P. 0. Box 1665, Douglas, AZ USA.

2 496 B. E. MIJARES-COLMENARES, ET AL. anxiety may affect creative thinking; however, the effect anxiety may have on attempts to improve creativity is not known. Research on creativity and anxiety presents a confusing picture. Ths is partly due to apparently conflicting research results, partly to a wide variety of definitions and measures of the two variables and a lack of specificity about what kind of divergent thinking is under investigation. In general, it seems there is a negative relationship between anxiety and creative thinking. Research by Grimm and Nachrnias (1977) indicated a negative relationship between manifest anxiety and verbal flexibllity (Cattell Fluency of Association Test). White (1968) found the same relations for anxiety (16 PF) with verbal flexibility, ideational fluency, and originality. Zdep's (1966) research also indicated a negative relationship between scores on the Manifest Anxiety Scale and ideational fluency. It seems there are differences in creative thinking when those with different levels of anxiety are compared. Individuals low on paranoid type anxiety (Cattell's scale) showed higher verbal originality (Dentler & Mackler, 1964) and those low on anxiety (Mandler-Sarnson scale) produced more original verbal responses. Klein (1975) studied the effect of an open versus structured class on anxiety (Sarason's scale) and fluency and originality; students low in anxiety had higher scores in the open class, but no difference was found in the structured class. Research (Strauss, Hadar, Shavit, & Itskowitz, 1981) indicated significant differences between those high and low on anxiety (Rorschach responses) and figural flexibility. The effect of anxiety-arousing instructions and anxiety (Sarason's scale) on verbal and figural originality indicated lower scores for the group high in anxiety, but no interaction of instruction or anxiety (Trentham, 1978). White (1968) found those low on anxiety (16 PF) scored higher on verbal flexibllity, ideational fluency, and originality. However, Flescher (1963) concluded anxiety (Sarason's scale) is not related to divergent drawing, originahty, spontaneous flexibility or ideational fluency, and Feldhusen, Denny, and Condon (1965) found no significant differences on verbal flexibility, originality or ideational fluency between subjects high and low in anxiety (Sarason's scale). It also seems creative problem solving does not increase anxiety (Riedel, Taylor, & Melnyk, 1983) and those high on fluency respond with less anxiety (Spielberger's scale) to a task requiring divergent thinking (Riedel, 1984) than those low on fluency. While many researchers do not specify what lund of creative thinlung (fluency, flexibility, originality, elaboration, verbal or figural) is studied, most work involves verbal measures which may be more influenced by anxiety. The trait score was used to estimate anxiety because it "refers to relatively stable individual differences in anxiety-proneness" (Spielberger, 1983, p. 1) and is less influenced by a particular situation. State-anxiety

3 SCAMPER TECHNIQUE: ANXIETY, CREATIVE THINKING 497 refers to a reaction or process at a given time. In light of this confusing picture the purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of the Scamper technique (Eberle, 1984b) on trait-anxiety and figural creative thinking using consensually validated measures of both variables. METHOD The subjects were 27 intellectually gifted junior high school students (16 boys, 11 girls) from an academic enrichment program in northeastern Mississippi. The subjects ranged in age from 12 to 15 yr. inclusive and were selected for the enrichment program on the basis of having a Full Scale WISC-R IQ of at least 127. Anxiety was measured using the trait subtest of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children (Spielberger, 1973). Creative thinking was measured on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thmking Figural Form A (Torrance, 1974). The training involved a series of exercises developed by Eberle (1982, 1984b) and Flack (1984). First of all, the meaning of and rationale for Scamper were given to the subjects (Eberle, 1977). Then, different games were presented to the subjects. Children in this study were trained with the following exercises: The Light Bulb, Pantomime related to Scamper, Cinderella's way to get to the ball (Flack, 1984), Goldilocks and the Three Bears (Flack, 1984), the Cardboard Box, the Alphabet Cake, the Eighth Day of the Week, and Leap Before You Look. The trained group was exposed to activities which employed the Scamper technique for 7 hr., 1 hr. per session. Scamper means "to run playfully about, as a child" (Eberle, 1977, p. 12), and the letter S stands for substitute, C for combine, A for adapt, M for modify, magnify, minimize, P for put to other uses, E for eliminate, and R for reverse and rearrange (B. Eberle, 1982, 1984a, 1984b; R. F. Eberle, 1977). Random assignment to control and experimental conditions produced two groups equivalent in age, IQ, and socioeconomic level. The experimental group was trained in the Scamper technique for seven l-hr. sessions. Scamper was chosen because this creative problem-solving training permits subjects to break away from rigid thinking patterns and put into action through writing, drawing or body language the skills taught. Scamper is a series of games that teach the students to substitute, combine, adapt, modify, magnify, put to other uses, eliminate, reverse, and rearrange. The control group spent an equal amount of time in convergent thinking activities. After training, all students were tested on the two instruments mentioned above. RESULTS Creative thinking and trait anxiety means and standard deviations were computed for both groups; see Table 1. An analysis of variance indicated no significant differences (p <.05) between groups on fluency, flexibility, orig-

4 498 B. E. MIJARES-COLMENARES, ET AL TABLE 1 TEST SCORES: MEANS, STANDARD DEVIATIONS, EFFECT SIZES Tests Control Group Trained Group Elfect M SD M SD Size Fluency Flexibihty Originality Elaboration Trait Anxiety inality, elaboration or trait anxiety. However, as the sample was small and statistical tests provide no insight into the strength of the treatment, effect size (Cohen, 1977) was calculated for the two groups on each of the five variables to indicate the strength of treatment or the magnitude of the differences (standardized differences between group means) between control and experimental groups. The values were small for fluency, originality, and elaboration, medium for trait-anxiety and high for flexibility. This study appears to be the first research on the effect of the Scamper technique on creative thinking. The sequence of training (7 1-hr. sessions over 7 days) may account for the lack of significant differences and small effect size for fluency, originality, and elaboration. Past research (Masten, Khatena, & Draper, in press) has shown that, when training is spread out and not on consecutive days, there were no significant improvements in verbal originality. In addition, Scamper may be more effective for figural flexibility than other types of creative thinking. The idea of an inverted-u relationship between anxiety and creativity (Riedel, et al., 1983) and the finding of better divergent thinking for subjects low in anxiety points to an area for possible future study. It may be that, when subjects of various levels of anxiety (high, medium or low) are trained, significant differences may result in creative thinlung between the groups. The present results regarding trait-anxiety are not congruent with the findings of Riedel, et al. (1983) who found little change in trait-anxiety after training in divergent, convergent and neutral tasks. Even though the tasks were not identical, the effect of creative tasks training on anxiety needs further study. It is possible that different types of creative tasks may have different effects on anxiety (Riedel, et al., 1783). While Torrance (1974) as well as R. F. Eberle (1977) advocate making creativity "game like" and it is widely acknowledged that game like conditions improve creativity test results, it is not clear that children see techniques like Scamper as fun. Therefore, it might be wise to assess sub-

5 SCAMPER TECIINIQUE: ANXIETY, CREATIVE THINKING 499 jects' perceptions of such training. Does their perception of the task influence how well they can learn from it to produce creative responses? Are they open to these new tasks and can they become intrigued by the challenge to think creatively or do they become anxious and seek to respond in famihar patterns? While there were no statistically significant differences, the effect size suggests the Scamper technique may be useful to improve flexibhty and decrease trait-anxiety. In further study of the effect of Scamper on creative thinking, anxiety levels of the control and experimental groups should be established before training, the sample increased in size and both duration and intensity of the treatment increased. Finally, the long-term effects of creativity training on both anxiety and divergent thnking need to be investigated. REFERENCES COFLEN, J. (1977) Statistical power analyses for the behavioral sciences. New York: Academic Press. DENTLER, R. A,, & MACKLER, B. (1964) Originality: some social and personal determinants. Behavioral Science, 9, 1-7. EBERLE, B. (1982) Visual thinking. Bdfalo, NY: D.O.K. Publ. EBERLE, B. (1984a) Imagin-action: pantomime games for creative expression. Buffalo, NJ: D.O.K. Publ. EBERLE, B. (1984b) Scamper on for cwative imagination development. Buffalo, NY: D.O.K. Publ. EBERLE, R. F. (1977) Scamper: gamesfor imagination development. Buffalo, NY: D.O.K. Publ. FELDHUSEN, J. F., DENNY, T., & CONDON, C. F. (1965) Anxiety, divergent thinking, and achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 56, FUCK, J. (1984) Using fairy tales with ifted children to develop creative skills. (Un ublished manuscript, University of ~olorajo, School of Education, Colorado Springs, C& FLEISCIIWI, G. (1965) The effects of anxiety upon tests of creativity. Dissertation Abstrack International, 25, (University Microfilms No ) FLESCCIER, I. (1963) Anxiet and achievement of intellectually gifted and creatively gdted children. Journal of ~ ryc~o/o~. 56, G ~ M V., E., & NACEIIMIAS, C (1977) The effect of cognitive style and manifest anxiety on intellectual and vocauonai Interest in adolescents. Journal o/ Vocational Behavior, 10, GWORD, J. P. (1967) The nature of human intelligence. New York: McGraw-Hill. GIJILFORD, J. l? (1977) Way beyond the IQ. Buffalo, NY: Creative Educa~ion Foundation. KLEIN, P. S. (1975) Effects of open versus structured teacher-student interaction on crcar~vity of children with different levels of anxiety. Psychology in the Schools, 12, MASTEN, W. G., KI-IATENA, J., & DRAPER, B. R. (in press) Hemispheric learning sryle and stimulation of creativity in intellectually superior students. Educational and Psychological Research. REDEL, 1-1 P R (1984) Anxiety responses to a divergent production task among high and low cl~velgent performers. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 59, RIEDEL, 14 P R, TAYLOR, I. A., & MELNYK, W. T. (1983) Effects of creative and noncreative problem-solving on anxiety. Perceptnu1 and Motor Skills, 56, SMITH, G. J. W., & CARLSSON, I. (1983) Creativity in early and middle school years. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 6, SPIELBERGER, C. D. (1973) Manual for the State-trait Anxiety Inventory for ChiMren. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.

6 500 B. E. MIJARES-COLMENARES, ET AL. SPIELBERGEK, C. D. (1983) Manual for the State-trait Anxiety Inventory Porn 0. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press. STRAUSS, H., HADAR, J., SIIAVIT, H., & ITSKOWITZ, R. (1981) Relationship between creativity, repression, and anxiety in first graders. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 53, TORRANCE, E. P. (1974) Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Lexington, MA: Personnel Press. TREN~~M, L. L. (1979) Anxiety and instruction effects on sixth-grade students in a testing WHITE, situation. Psychology in the Schools, 16, K. (1968) Anxiety, extraversion-introversion and divergent thinking ability. Journal of Creative Behavior, 2, ZDEP, S. M. (1966) Intelligence, creativity and anxiety among college students. Psychological Reports, 19, 420. Accepted August 17, 1988