Data from an online experiment testing the effect of instructions to "be creative" on 5- to 6-year-old children's creativity, and the contribution of executive function skills

Abstract

Although executive functions (EF; controlled, top-down cognitive processes) may seem antithetical to creative thinking, research with adult populations suggests that top-down processes actually support some components of the creative process. When adults are asked to "be creative," those with stronger executive skills show a larger creativity boost, suggesting they use these skills to reflect on and modify their ideation (Nusbaum et al., 2014). Whether children use their EF skills similarly, however, remains unclear. This record contains data from a study published in Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, which investigated whether young children use EF to deliberately modify their creative idea-generation. 148 typically developing 5- to 6-year-olds from a midwestern region of the United States (50% female, mostly White and from high-income homes) took part in the study over Zoom. Children completed behavioral tasks to assess their verbal skills (Stanford-Binet verbal routing subtest; Roid, 2005) and executive functions (Backward Digit Span and Hearts and Flowers; Wechsler, 2003; Davis & Pratt, 1995; Davidson et al., 2006). They also completed the Alternate Uses Task (AUT) -- a creative idea-generation (divergent thinking) task in which they generated possible uses for two objects (string and box). Children were randomly assigned to one of two instructions for the AUT: to come up with "as many ideas as you can" or "ideas that are creative." Details of the study procedure can be found in the manuscript "Can young children control their creativity? Examining the role of executive function in modifying children’s creative processes" published in Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. This record contains the de-identified data and R code needed to replicate the analyses reported in the manuscript.