The Effects of Technology and Peer Collaboration on Children's Creativity

The aim of this research was to gain a more comprehensive understanding of 5- to 7-year-old children’s creativity and discover what factors affect it. In particular, the focus of this research was to find out how and in which ways touchscreen device use and peer collaboration affect children’s creativity. Two different creative domains were measured: storytelling and drawing. Storytelling was measured in two cultures: the UK and Turkey. A new way to measure children’s creative storytelling was developed. Linguistic components of children’s stories were evaluated to measure two divergent thinking skills (fluency and elaboration) in a more objective way. Children’s stories were also measured by independent judges using the Consensual Assessment Technique. Touchscreen use did not affect children’s creativity in either of the countries. Collaboration had a positive effect on the fluency of British children’s stories, no effect on their overall creativity, and a negative effect on their elaboration. For Turkish children collaboration had a positive effect on the fluency and overall creativity of their stories, and no effect on the elaboration scores. Children’s creative drawing was measured using the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT)-Figural. The effects of children’s perceived peer acceptance were also measured. Collaboration had a positive effect on children’s fluency, however it did not affect their originality or elaboration. Overall these results provide a holistic evaluation of the effects of collaboration on creativity across different domains and different cultures.