Imaginary Worldplay as an Indicator of Creative Giftedness · Imaginary Worldplay as an Indicator of Creative Giftedness Michele Root-Bernstein Abstract Creative potential in childhood,

Book Shavinina 9781402061615 Proof2 December 2, 2008

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Chapter 29

Imaginary Worldplay as an Indicator of Creative Giftedness

Michele Root-Bernstein

Abstract Creative potential in childhood, of a kindbearing fruit in maturity, reveals itself in imaginativeplay, the most complex of which is the inventionof imaginary worlds (paracosms). Worldplay oftenincludes the generation of stories, drawings, etc.,that provide evidence of little c creative behavior.Historical examples (e.g., the Brontes) suggest thatproductive worldplay may thus serve as a “learninglaboratory” for adult achievement. Early researchexplored ties between worldplay and later artisticendeavor. Recent study of gifted adults finds stronglinks, too, between worldplay and mature creativeaccomplishment in the sciences and social sciences. Asmany as 1 in 30 children may invent worlds in solitary,secret play that is hidden from ready view. Worldplaynevertheless figured tangentially in early studies ofintellectual precocity. Improved understanding of thephenomenon, its nature and its potential for nurture,should bring childhood worldplay to the foreground asan indicator of creative giftedness.

Keywords Imaginative play · Imaginary worlds ·Paracosm · Worldplay pedagogy · Productive creativ-ity · Creative process · Creative behavior · Creativegiftedness

Introduction

Intellectual giftedness and precocious talent appearon the horizon of childhood with the insistence of

M. Root-Bernstein (B)Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USAe-mail: [email protected]

a shining moon or planet. People notice and ad-mire the child who can best most adults at chessor mathematics or perform a violin solo with thelocal orchestra. Gifted programs in the schools orprivate tutelage can do much to promote them both.Creative giftedness in childhood, a rather differentcategory of precociousness involving originalityand inventiveness (Getzels & Jackson, 1962, pp.3–7; Milgram, 1990, p. 217), proves a more elu-sive, shooting star. Efforts to identify and nurturechildren with the potential for productive innovationand invention in adulthood have largely met withdisappointment (Terman et al., 1925/1954; Termanand Oden, 1959; Subotnik, Kassan, Summers, &Wasser, 1993). Two unusual approaches to cre-ative giftedness in childhood combined here may,however, re-inform its detection and nurture in theyoung.

The first approach is to focus on complex imagi-native play – in this case the invention of imaginaryworlds or paracosms – as a potential indicator of cre-ative behavior in general. One way to identify nascentcreative talent in children, it has been suggested, isto examine their free-choice leisure activities outsidethe classroom (Milgram, 1990, pp. 217, 228–229). Thesecond approach is to trace the incidence of this world-play in creative adults in order to determine the strengthof its association with mature giftedness. Though sucha retrospective study does not establish causality, itmay identify likely play behaviors for prospective andlongitudinal study. Together the two approaches sug-gest that worldplay is an early sign in childhood of thesame creative behaviors that characterize innovativeadults at work in many fields of endeavor – indeed, theinvention of imaginary worlds may in many instancesprepare experientially for mature creative achievement.

L.V. Shavinina (ed.), International Handbook on Giftedness, 599DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-6162-2 29, c© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009


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600 M. Root-Bernstein

Giftedness in Play

Interest in the play practice of gifted children datesback to at least the early decades of the 20th cen-tury. Initially a means of typifying the sociability ofchildren with precocious intellect or talent (Termanet al., 1925/1954, pp. 385, 437–439), such interest hasmore recently turned to characteristics of the play itselfas educators and researchers realized that the gifted aregifted, not just during classroom hours but all the time(Subotnik et al., 1993, p. 98). Milgram (1990) foundthat many gifted children freely devoted extracurricu-lar time to activities that satisfied their curiosity and de-veloped their interests (p. 222). In at least three subse-quent studies, the observation was corroborated: giftedchildren read voraciously; they practiced skills relatedto particular talents; they spent time drawing or danc-ing or making music, they played intricate board gamesand solved challenging puzzles and they played imag-inatively (Subotnik et al., 1993, p. 38; Klein, 1992, p.248; Gross, 2004, pp. 130–133). Gross found pretendor fantasy play a favorite pastime among the highlygifted children she studied, as did others. By and large,that fantasy play was more elaborate than the pretendplay of non-gifted age-mates, involving intricate rules,extensive plots and complex roles that unfolded overtime (Kearney, 2000). Morelock (1997) argued thatsuch fantasy play typically featured “complex clustersof diverse concepts and facts” joined logically withflights of fancy into “internally consistent conceptualstructures” (p. 2). Generally speaking, in their imagi-native play gifted children make original patchworksof personal meaning out of their limited experience andprecocious knowledge. One way they do so is to inventimaginary worlds of their own design.

Worldplay

Worldplay may be defined as the repeated evocation ofan imagined place (often, but not always) inhabited byimagined people or beings. When such activity man-ifests, it does so within a normal developmental pat-tern of make-believe play. The ability to pretend firstemerges in the human 2 year-old and blossoms withinthe next three years. As the child’s capacity for pre-tense grows, he explores a variety of imaginative be-haviors. Make-believe begins with the simple substitu-

tion of one object for another, the animation of inani-mate things and, often, the invention of imaginary com-panions. It rapidly evolves into the more complex play-acting of social roles or characters, the re-enacting ofstories heard or read in books and, at times, the invent-ing of serial bed stories shared before sleep (Cohen &MacKeith, 1991, pp. 107–111).

For the most part, all these behaviors prove commonin early childhood (3–6 years). In middle childhood(7–12 years), however, the simpler imaginative behav-iors begin to drop out and more complex and inventiveforms of make-believe emerge. In general, a concomi-tant shift also occurs in these years from the solitaryor side-by-side play of toddlers to the group play ofelementary school children, as when siblings or neigh-borhood friends pretend to inhabit together a desert is-land or devise narratives for secret societies. Solitarymake-believe does not disappear in middle childhood,however. At about the time that reading becomes silent,solitary pretend play appears to internalize in secretdaydreams and related self-told stories or written nar-ratives (Singer & Singer, 1990, pp. 32, 41, 72, passim;Cohen & MacKeith, 1991, p. 111). At this point, typ-ically in middle childhood and in the context of pri-vate solitary play – or play shared with only a fewothers – the invention of imaginary worlds may takeplace. Sometimes this worldplay grows out of earlierimaginative pretense with animated toys or imaginarycompanions; sometimes it builds upon new imagina-tive inspiration. Usually it peters out around puberty;sometimes it lasts into the late teens or early twenties;in a very few cases it persists through adulthood.

Worldplay distinguishes itself as a complex andelaborate form of make-believe in several ways. Mostchildhood play is ephemeral. Children may play atdolls or trucks, blocks or dress-up, but the scenariosthat capture their imagination for an hour or a dayinvariably dissolve like gossamer when playtime ends.Worldplay, in contrast, is more persistent; for weeks,months or even years, the child revisits over and againthe same make-believe scenario. The imagined placetakes on a consistency of aspect, whether it is describedin ongoing narrative or proliferative system-building.At the same time, the imaginary world tends to evolve,as the child embellishes the adventures of particularpersons or elaborates the analogue language, geogra-phy, history or a simulated sports league of a particularworld. Despite the child’s concerted efforts to makethe parallel seem real, however, worldplay in no way


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29 Imaginary Worldplay as an Indicator of Creative Giftedness 601

replicates the fantasies of psychotic individuals unableto distinguish between imagination and reality (Cohen& MacKeith, 1991, p. 14; Silvey & MacKeith, 1988,pp. 173–174). Worldplay is first and foremost play.Indeed, at its most complex, it is creative play. Forthe child who documents or structures the inventionof place with maps, drawings, statistical lists, writtenhistories, stories or any number of other constructiveartifacts, exercises creative behavior.

Worldplay as Creative Play

Creative behavior, at its most fundamental, involves thegeneration and the expression or instantiation of ideas,things or processes that are both novel and effective.If novel refers to the originality of the created idea orthing itself, effective refers to its subsequent reception,for a creative idea or thing takes on a life of its ownafter communication to others – it fills a cultural need,solves a social or intellectual problem recognized bya larger group. At its most powerful, creative behav-ior is revolutionary, producing the ideas, solutions andinventions that recombine disciplines and technologiesor carve out new ones. Big C creativity of this sort en-compasses the contributions of a Newton, a Gandhi, aJoyce or an Edison. Most people, including children,are not capable of creative impact at this worldwidelevel. They are, however, capable of creative behav-iors that generate ideas, fill needs and solve problemswithin the smaller circles of ethnicity, polity, neighbor-hood or family. Different in quality, but not necessarilyin kind, little c creativity anchors the other end of agradating spectrum of like behaviors.

The child who invents and elaborates an imaginaryworld engages in creative behavior of the little c vari-ety. She brings into being novel things, such as maps orhistories of a uniquely imagined place, that are person-ally effective, in that they document and structure herconception of an analogue world. This imagined world,if communicated to others, may also strike family andfriends – even a somewhat larger community – as fresh,original and charming. Worldplay’s real benefit, how-ever, does not lie in its outer, social influence. Rather,it lies in its inner influence upon the child herself. Toinvent and elaborate imaginary worlds is to develop asense of self as a creator by immersing oneself in cre-ative process.

Take the contemporary case of one M. Around theage of 9 years, she began designing a language basedon pictographs. The simple sentences and stories shewrote out in this way supposed a simple people, whomshe called the Kar. These people required a world to in-habit. Within a few years M. had begun to generate ver-bal and pictorial descriptions of their daily lives. Muchlike an anthropologist she documented their holidays,their clothing, their homes, their food, their myths,mathematics and music. Whatever she learned of hu-man culture in school or in her own wide-ranging read-ing, she transposed into some analogue form in herimagined world. And in many moments of this imag-inative undertaking, which persisted into her teenageyears, she engaged in one aspect or another of the cre-ative process.

Psychologists conventionally describe that processas involving elements or stages of preparation, incuba-tion, insight and elaboration (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996,pp. 79–80). Suffice it to say here that time and againM. prepared for creative endeavor by setting herself aproblem – for instance, how did the Kar actually cometo write their stories? Such a problem might incubatefor some time while she asked the questions and gath-ered the books and artwork which fueled her infor-mal, free-choice learning. At some point around theage of 12 years, the imagined development of spokenand written language coalesced for her with the imag-ined emergence of simple writing implements and animagined economy that valued narrative goods. On thestrength of such insight, M. elaborated histories of the“time . . . called the word explosion” in which “at amarket, a person can get a fine blanket or a pot for astory, or more for a book.” A couple of years later, inan illustration format drawn from Eyewitness BooksTM

and other visual dictionaries for children, she docu-mented the sophisticated tools and furniture of the pro-fessional scribe, for “almost every village had someonewho spent their time writing stories” (“About Writing,”personal papers).

M.’s worldplay was shot through with yet anotherwell-recognized ingredient of creative thinking, thecomparison and synthesis of two or more unlikethings. The discoveries of science and of art, as JacobBronowski famously expressed it, “are explorations –more, are explosions, of a hidden likeness” (1956,pp. 30–31). The discoveries of the novice creatoralso depend on recognizing similarities, even if theseappear less hidden to adepts. In the case of M.’s Kar


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drawings, first undertaken around the age of 12 years,the synthetic blendings were two-fold. The drawingsthemselves represented a visual amalgamation of earlyhuman cave art, Egyptian tomb paintings and otherancient pictorial forms. Moreover, they nearly alwaystransposed or anticipated Kar stories, especially thoseabout the god-like beings of legend. In the marriageof picture and story, M. manifested her personaldiscovery that visual iconography is like narrativemyth is like the very foundations of an imaginedworld. More often than not, the exploration anddocumentation of these congruences required theintegration of what we formally recognize as distinctforms of expression. Like many other children whoinvent and elaborate imaginary worlds, M. nearlyalways expressed her vision in multiple and syntheticways; visually, verbally, sometimes musically as well.By her late teens, this tendency was quite marked(Fig. 29.1 and Appendix). Indeed, the integrationof what many consider separate domains is whatdistinguishes worldplay from juvenilia focused on one

recognized locus of technical talent or one recognizedbody of specialized knowledge.

A History of Worldplay

M.’s play in an imaginary world of her own inventionhas historical antecedents. Over the past 200 years orso, worldplay has figured as a curiosity of childhoodin the backgrounds of people likely to write memoirsor leave personal papers of interest to others. Writersof the 19th and 20th centuries such as Robert LouisStevenson, C. S. Lewis, Stanislaw Lem, W.H. Auden,Vera Brittain and Gertrude Stein left testimony ofchildhood worldplay (Goertzel & Goertzel, 1962,p. 117n; Silvey & MacKeith, 1988, pp. 191–194;Lem,1975/1995). So did the actor Peter Ustinov(1976/1998, pp. 276–282). And the visual artistClaes Oldenburg has revealed the imaginary land ofhis childhood to at least one biographer (Rose, 1970,

Fig. 29.1 “Wall Painting in a Cave (the death of the hero Yeo-ceroee)”. The first lines of the Kar writing read, “Once the flower

is taken it is forever dead, and no flower lives in beauty but a herodied there.” For a full translation, see Appendix


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p. 19). However, the earliest known case of a childhoodparacosm is that invented by an individual remarkableonly in childhood. Thomas Malkin, a precociousstudent of Greek, Latin and other classical studies,focused much imaginative play on the invented land of“Allestone” before his death at the age of 7 years in1802 (Malkin, 1806/1997). Other remarkable childrenwho invented imaginary worlds include Malkin’snear contemporary Hartley Coleridge, brilliant son ofSamuel Taylor Coleridge and inventor of “Ejuxria”(Coleridge, 1851; Plotz, 2001, pp. 191–251), andBarbara Follett, who brought her young vision of“Farksolia” to fruition in a precocious novel publishedin 1927 (McCurdy, 1966). Exceptional childrenwho also achieved renown in adulthood include theGerman philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (Forster-Nietzsche, 1912, pp. 46–47), the English writerThomas De Quincey (De Quincey, 1853, pp. 97–98)and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Cox, 1926/1953, p.592).

Hands down, the best known example of worldplaybelongs to the Bronte siblings, children of the wildmoors in 19th century England. Branwell Bronte’s un-quenchable enthusiasm for toy soldiers pulled him andhis three sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, into twodecades of the most elaborate and best documentedworldplay yet on record. Enacted make-believe withtoy soldiers soon made way for the manufacture ofmaps, reports of military campaigns, miniature maga-zines, drawings of people and places, and story uponwritten story that traced the ongoing saga of the in-habitants of Great Glass Town, an imaginary Verdopo-lis somewhere in the far reaches of Africa. Sometimein their teens Emily and Anne developed an offshootof Glass Town known as Gondal, while Branwell andCharlotte elaborated another offshoot known as An-gria. Even as they moved into early adulthood, all foursiblings absorbed themselves fully in this worldplayby reading voraciously for inspiration, drawing imagi-nary landscapes and persons, and generating hundredsof manuscripts.

Eventually, the Bronte sisters parlayed the creativeand literary tutelage of their worldplay into the produc-tion of novels and books of poetry that shook the foun-dations of 19th century literature. From these individu-als and others like them who make a mark in maturity,it is possible to get a sense of the great creative boonin adulthood that may follow upon worldplay in child-hood. In the case of the Bronte sisters, literary scholars

have traced with exhaustive care the technical appren-ticeship in writing that play with Glass Town, Gondaland Angria afforded the girls (Ratchford, 1949; Evans& Evans, 1982; Alexander, 1983; Barker, 1997). Psy-chologists, for their part, have recognized the Bronteexample as one that may broaden understanding of ju-venile activity that prepares for adult creative achieve-ment or even the eminence of genius (Cohen & MacK-eith, 1991, pp. 2–4; McGreevy, 1995). The Brontes’worldplay served as a “learning laboratory” charac-terized by self-paced, free-choice learning; encourage-ment of eccentric as well as conventional interests; ahigh tolerance for fantasy play; and time free of otherdistractions to indulge all three (McGreevy, 1995, pp.146–147, passim). And, icing on the cake, the childrenconsciously referred to themselves as “Genii” in thatlearning laboratory, first as god-like participants andlater as confident and audacious creators of stories andpoems.

Instances of childhood worldplay plucked from thepast tend, by their very nature, to privilege examplesof genius in which immature play had direct and obvi-ous relationship to mature achievement. This was cer-tainly the case for the Bronte sisters, whose childhoodplay would surely have remained a literary curiosity ifnot for the link between their early juvenilia and laterartistry. But worldplay of the caliber and consequenceproduced by the Bronte siblings represents only the ex-treme tip of a much larger phenomenon. Like gifted-ness in general, the invention of imaginary worlds inchildhood is more widespread than the rare cases ofcreative eminence in mature adults with which it maybe associated. Indeed, a ground-breaking study under-taken in the late 20th century found sophisticated in-stances of childhood worldplay well hidden in the gen-eral population.

The First Study of ContemporaryWorldplay

Robert Silvey, the man who first initiated in the late1970s the study which culminated in The Develop-ment of Imagination, the Private Worlds of Childhood(1990), was himself an inventor of an imaginary worldin childhood. The enduring personal as well as edu-cational value of his “New Hentian States” intriguedhim. His play had been a spur to “the acquisition of


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knowledge,” he wrote, but even more, “the stimulationof curiosity” (Silvey, 1977, p. 18). In the late 1970she began soliciting other instances of world-buildingin the general public by placing ads in British newspa-pers. Eventually he compiled over 50 dossiers of ma-terial on imaginary worlds, which he and his profes-sional collaborators called paracosms. After Silvey’sdeath, Cohen & MacKeith (1991) placed 64 of theseparacosms described by 57 adults in a context of psy-chological and creative development. In particular, theyshed light on the imaginary worlds of childhood by es-tablishing for the first time what appeared to be an as-cending complexity of forms and contents.

Cohen and MacKeith discerned five typical cate-gories: paracosms based on or invoking fantasy playwith (1) toys, (2) particular places and local commu-nities, (3) imagined islands, countries and their peo-ples, (4) imagined systems, documents and languagesand (5) unstructured, idyllic worlds. Some of their dataappeared to indicate that as world-inventing childrenmatured, their focus tended to shift from the personalintimacy of toy families to the social interactions oflarger establishments to the increasingly abstract cul-tural, economic and political systems that characterizesociety at large or utopian visions. Two out of threegirls in the sample focused on the social and emotionalinteractions of characters, while nine out of ten boysfocused on the elaboration of settings – bureaucra-cies, histories or games, for instance – with little per-sonalized content (Silvey & MacKeith, 1988, p. 186).In either case, paracosms that took on the inventionof countries, peoples, languages or socio-political sys-tems modeled the real world in strikingly sophisticatedfashion.

In addition to the classification of types, Cohen andMacKeith wished to ascertain in a general way theoverall incidence of worldplay in the general popula-tion. Because of the nature of their self-selecting sam-ple, however, they were unable to do so, except in-so-far as to assert that the phenomenon was uncommon.

Cohen and MacKeith had also hoped to find somelink between the childhood invention of imaginaryworlds and adult professional achievement. In theevent, two factors seem to have convinced them thatchildhood worldplay did not contribute to the creativedevelopment of individuals in their sample. First, onlya small and disappointing number of their respondentsbecame writers or artists as adults. Second, apparentlyno one in their sample had (at time of study) achieved

publicly recognized success, let alone the kind of emi-nence associated with discipline-altering achievement.Again, the nature of their study precluded any solidconclusion. Perhaps due to the weight of the Bronteexample, which, along with other historical exemplars,suggested that worldplay most obviously prepared foradult achievement in the literary (or perhaps other)arts, the researchers ignored Silvey’s initial intuitionthat the invention of imaginary worlds in childhoodmight stimulate curiosity and knowledge acquisitionin general.

The oversight was critical. Silvey had drawn maps;he had written out a history and a constitution for “TheNew Hentian States” and produced its newspapers, al-manacs and financial tables. He grew up to inauguratethe new business field of audience research at the BBC,marrying the demands of statistical inquiry to socio-logical and psychological nuance. By any measure, hedid so successfully, too. In recognition of his achieve-ments, he was appointed Officer of the Order of theBritish Empire (OBE) in 1960, an honor granted forvaluable service in the arts, sciences and public sectors(Silvey, 1974, pp. 193–194). The connections betweenworldplay, profession and professional success wereindirect, yet compelling in Silvey’s case. He carved apath through audience research because he intimatelyunderstood that a valid sample “had to be selected insuch a way as to be a miniature, a scale-model, of theuniverse” (Silvey, 1974, p. 46). For Silvey a samplewas, in effect, an imagined world. Indeed, his experi-ence, in contrast to that of the Brontes, suggested thatthe potential benefits in maturity of childhood world-play did not reside in technical or professional trainingper se. Rather those benefits were to be found in thegeneral exercise of imaginative and creative behaviorthat might surface in any number of professions and indisparate measures of professional success.

Worldplay in a Population of CreativeAdults

A recent study of worldplay in childhood among adultsof recognized creative achievement tested both the in-sights gained from Silvey’s personal experience andthe very different conclusions drawn by his collabo-rators (M. Root-Bernstein & Root-Bernstein, 2006).Its purpose was three-fold: to determine the relative


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incidence of worldplay in a demonstrably creative pop-ulation and in a general population; to determine therelative strength of its association with a wide range ofmature disciplinary occupations; and to explore phe-nomenologically, that is, by means of queries and inter-views, the understanding study subjects may have hadof connection between childhood play and adult cre-ative success in a variety of disciplines. In general, itwas hypothesized that the childhood invention of imag-inary worlds may in fact be a predictor for adult cre-ativity across the arts, humanities, social sciences andsciences.

For the purposes of this undertaking, MacArthurFellows appointed in the years 1981 through 2001 pre-sented a uniquely suitable, ready-made group for study.Drawn from a wide range of disciplines in the sci-ences, social sciences, arts, humanities and public af-fairs professions, Fellows are selected by the John D.and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for extraor-dinary originality and exceptional creative promise intheir fields of endeavor. The Foundation’s public recog-nition of these individuals, as well as the terms of thatrecognition, strongly argue that the Fellows as a wholecomprise a population of gifted adults. Fellowship re-cipients were queried about their childhood play andits connections to adult vocation and avocation.

A similar query was administered to a control groupof students enrolled in a variety of courses at Michi-gan State University in the spring and fall of 2003, ad-justing for intended, rather than actual profession, andthe inclusion of practical careers within the five pro-fessional categories utilized by the MacArthur Foun-dation. The entrance level for this large, land-grant in-stitution is moderately difficult (on average, studentsscore between 1040 and 1260 (combined scores) on theSAT) and the student body, at least in comparison withthe MacArthur Fellows, represented a population of in-dividuals selected for ordinary achievement.

The comparison of data from both groups yieldedthe following results:

First, the study found worldplay to be morecommon than hitherto supposed. The incidenceof researcher-assessed worldplay among sampledFellows was 26%. It remained unknown, however,whether MacArthur Fellows who did not respond tothe query invented imaginary worlds in the same,greater or lesser numbers. Assuming that the wholegroup engaged in childhood worldplay at the same rateas the sample, 26% was set as a maximum proportion.

Assuming that the sample in fact netted all Fellowsappointed between 1981 and 2001 with this childhoodexperience, a minimum proportion was set at 5%.Thus, the rate of worldplay in a creative populationpresumably lay somewhere between 5% and 26%.Among students, worldplay was similarly assessed at12%. Once again, assuming that the sample incidencerepresented that of the whole, 12% set a maximumproportion of students who engaged in childhoodworldplay. Assuming that all students who participatedin worldplay responded to the questionnaire, theminimum rate for all students in the control group was3%. This set the range of worldplay among a generalpopulation at 3–12%. By these measures, worldplayemerged as a palpable presence in the landscape ofmake-believe play, one that is potentially twice ascommon among recognizably creative individuals as itis among average university students.

Second, the data validated the expectation thatindividuals inventing imaginary worlds in childhoodparticipate as adults in a wide variety of disci-plines. Among MacArthur Fellows the distribution ofchildhood worldplay ranged from 19% for sampledindividuals in the public issues professions and in thesciences to 22% for sampled individuals in the arts,33% in the humanities and 46% in the social sciences(Table 29.1). This disciplinary distribution of child-hood worldplay among Fellows proved significantlydifferent from the same distribution in the controlgroup. Students in the humanities (33%), public issuesprofessions (16%) and arts (15%) were more likelythan students in social sciences (8%) or sciences (6%)to have invented imaginary worlds, by a factor of twoor more. A comparison of the two groups revealed thatthe higher incidence of childhood worldplay amongFellows in the arts, social sciences and sciences wasstatistically significant (see Chart 29.1). Scientists andsocial scientists selected for their creativity were morelikely to have childhood worldplay in their backgroundthan a general population of students planning to gointo these fields.

Third, over half of the study’s select and generalpopulations – whether or not they had invented worldsin childhood – believed they engaged in some aspectof worldplay in their adult vocations and avocations.In the context of the query, mature worldplay referredto participation in, or creation of, make-believe worldsin paintings, plays, film and novels. It also referredto engagement in or invention of hypothetical models


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Table 29.1 Breakdown of Assessed Worldplay Among MacArthur Fellows and MSU Students by Professional Field

ARTS HUMANITIES PUB ISSUES SOCIAL SCI SCIENCES Undecided TOTAL

F S F S F S∗ F S∗∗ F S S F S

Sample # 23 40 12 9 16 86 13 62 26 50 15 90 262Positive self-reports 11 19 6 6 6 33 8 24 8 19 4 39 105Assessed

worldplay +5 6 4 3 3 14 6 5 5 3 1 23 32

Assessed notworldplay +

6 13 2 3 3 19 2 19 3 16 3 16 73

% Worldplay byprofessional field

22 15 33 33 19 16 46 8 19 6 7 26 12

NOTE: F = Fellows, S = Students.∗ Includes those students intending careers in law, education and journalism.∗∗ Includes those students intending careers in business.+ Relaxed assortment. Ambiguous responses were distributed into “assessed worldplay” and “not worldplay” categories.

and constructs in the sciences, social sciences andhumanities. When it came to adult worldplay at work,reports surfaced in every discipline (see Chart 29.2).Moreover, among those who did invent imaginaryworlds as children, many Fellows (61%) and students(72%) saw connections between that childhood playand their adult vocational worldplay (see Table 29.2).MacArthur Fellow artists with worldplay in theirbackgrounds were most apt to see direct connec-tions between that play and adult endeavor (100%),followed by their peers in the humanities (75%),the social sciences (67%) and the sciences (40%).

Students with worldplay in their backgrounds sawa connection to anticipated adult worldplay at workin the social sciences, arts, public issues professionsand humanities from 60% to 100% of the time;none anticipated connection to projected work in thesciences.

By and large, student perceptions suggested that tiesbetween childhood worldplay and adult endeavor arereadily recognized in the arts, where “imaginary, fic-tional worlds” are similarly created in literature, music,dance or the visual arts. However, there was less ex-pectation – possibly due to educational or professional

0ARTS HUM

BLACK = Fellows GRAY = Students

* = p<.05 ** = p<.001 *** = p<.0001

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Chart 29.1 Childhood Worldplay (Relaxed Assortment):MacArthur Fellows and MSU Students. For statistical values of

the data and the full discussion of results, see M. Root-Bernstein& Root-Bernstein (2006)


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Chart 29.2 Worldplay inAdult Work: MacArthurFellows and MSU Students.For full discussion of the dataand interpretation of results,see M. Root-Bernstein &Root-Bernstein (2006)

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bias – in the humanities and social sciences that thereconstruction of bygone days or the projection of fu-ture scenarios, both of which must adhere to knownfacts, resemble “imagined, possible worlds” of child-hood. Similarly, students did not expect theorizing inthe sciences to resemble worldplay at all. Quite pos-sibly, students reflected expectations of conventionalcontribution held by the institutions and professionalcohorts which trained them.

Be that as it may, gifted adults were far more likelyto find the imaginative and creative qualities of child-hood worldplay relevant to their mature disciplinaryactivity – not just in the arts, but in the humanities, so-cial sciences and sciences as well. No matter the field,for many MacArthur Fellows the drive for disciplinaryverisimilitude required a blend of logic, experiment ortestable hypothesis with the construction of a delim-ited, imagined world. For one Fellow in the sciencesthis involved a kind of make-believe usually identifiedas fiction:

“In a real sense to do theory is to explore imaginaryworlds because all models are simplified versions of re-ality, the world. Part of the art of it all is what gets put in

and what gets left out. But it’s “bounded imagination”. . .Since lots gets left out of any model, part of the art hasbeen described as the suspension of disbelief. . .I will, fora while, believe in this simple world, even though I knowlots of ways it fails to capture nature” (As cited in M.Root-Bernstein & Root-Bernstein, 2006).

In addition to the world-building which pervadesadult creative activity, Fellows were also apt to retainfrom childhood worldplay a general understanding ofand familiarity with creative behavior. That behaviorranged from persistent absorption with what is imag-ined, to the discovery, synthesis and organization ofknowledge, to the modeling of physical processes be-yond our direct apprehension, that is to say, “mind playthat stays within the bounds of reality, but still asksabout something that you have never seen or knownto happen” (as cited in M. Root-Bernstein & Root-Bernstein, 2006). Indeed, early immersion in world-play may prepare for mature creativity in a number ofways:

First, worldplay may exercise imaginative ca-pacities including imaging, empathizing, and mod-eling explored elsewhere as tools for thinking

Table 29.2 Connections Between Childhood and Adult Worldplay: MacArthur Fellows and MSU Students

ARTS HUMANITIES PUB ISSUES SOCIAL SCI SCIENCES Undecided TOTAL

F S F S F S F S F S S F S

Assessed worldplay + 5 6 4 3 3 14 6 5 5 3 11 23 32Perceived connection

child/adult worldplay5 4 3 3 0 12 4 3 2 0 1 14 23

% 100 67 75 100 0 86 67 60 40 0 9 61 72NOTE: F = Fellows, S = Students.+ Relaxed assortment. Ambiguous responses were distributed into “assessed worldplay” and “not worldplay” categories.


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(R. Root-Bernstein & Root-Bernstein, 1999). Withoutthese skills, creative thinking is compromised.

Second, worldplay may exercise the capacity forcontinued imaginative play, especially in older chil-dren, well after the intense exploration of make-believein early childhood typically fades. Play and the knackfor remaining “childlike” are often linked to adult cre-ativity.

Third, worldplay may exercise the capacity for con-vergent problem solving within an imagined yet con-sistent system, whether that make-believe is realisticor fantastic.

Fourth, because it does so by tying the exigencies ofconvergent problem solving to the divergent efferves-cence of play, worldplay may nurture both the abilityand the audacity to imagine potentially new and effec-tive solutions to perennial human challenges. The cre-ative individual requires more than disciplinary exper-tise, he or she requires the vision to identify and defineproblems not yet conceived and set them in appropri-ate context. In this venture, as Einstein famously put it,“Imagination is more important than knowledge” (ascited in Calaprice, 2000).

And fifth, worldplay may provide early training inthe invention of culture by bridging the gap betweena virtual imagination and a creative one. The virtualimagination is one in which the conceived idea remainspersonal, inarticulate and often ephemeral. The cre-ative imagination instantiates the virtual, makes it com-municable to local or global society in some durable,formal way through diverse mediums such as visual art,music, dance, story, experiment, hypothesis and tech-nological invention.

This re-evaluation of childhood worldplay in termsof adult creative endeavor sets aright certain mis-conceptions of worldplay in earlier research. Amongadults recognized for creative giftedness, worldplaymay, at a maximum, figure in childhood play in asmany as one out of four. This is more than twice themaximal rate projected for the population at large.Moreover, childhood worldplay may be associatedwith adult creative achievement in a far wider arenathan literary or artistic accomplishment alone. Theenduring benefit to adults of childhood worldplay doesnot lie necessarily or only in an early immersion intechnical skills such as writing or drawing. It lies, aswell, in the early immersion in self-prescribed “learn-ing laboratories,” in self-taught creative behaviorsand in self-nurtured attributes of creative personality.

Worldplay may thus serve as a general preparationfor creative achievement in the humanities, socialsciences, and the sciences as well as in the arts. It mayalso serve, at times, as a specific apprenticeship incraft, especially for the arts.

Psychologists have long sought in the backgroundsof creative individuals the factors that may haveforeshadowed or shaped their mature contributionsand prominence (e.g., Ellis, 1904; Cox, 1926/1953;Cobb, 1977; Goertzel & Goertzel, 1962; and othersmentioned in Hollingworth, 1942, pp. 15–18). World-play, as a highly recognizable instance of compleximaginative play, may be added to that list.

Worldplay as a Sign of CreativeGiftedness in Childhood

To the extent that worldplay predicts mature creativity,it follows that it also indicates creative giftedness inchildhood. No fewer than 1 in 30 children in the gen-eral population may devote time and energy to imag-inary worlds of their own invention and may instanti-ate their complex imagination in the production of sto-ries, histories, drawings, maps, games and other doc-uments of play. As such, paracosm play may serve tosupplement objective measures of intellectual gifted-ness (such as high IQ), as well as subjective measuresof superior technical talent (such as math or musicalprodigiousness) presently in use. Certainly the playful,imaginative and problem-solving aspects of worldplayin childhood, as well as its characteristic signs of imag-inative absorption, free-choice learning and passionatepersistence, argue strongly for a kind of creative gifted-ness in childhood that mirrors giftedness in adults. Tak-ing note of self-initiated and self-sustained worldplayindeed draws our attention to children who early im-merse themselves in imaginative problem generationand problem solving for the fun of it and thus aids inearly recognition of true creative potential.

Recognition of complex imaginative play in generaland of worldplay in particular marks a return of a kindto the earliest research in the characteristics of giftedchildren. In the early 1920s, Lewis Terman made anattempt to characterize the play life of the 643 giftedchildren – selected for superior “all-round intelligence”and superior “special talent” – who made up his studygroup (Terman et al., 1925/1954, pp. 385–439). Most


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concerned with physical versus intellectual and socialversus solitary aspects of childhood play, interview ex-perience led Terman to include two questions relat-ing to the imaginative quality of play life. In a ques-tionnaire completed by parents of his gifted subjects,Terman asked, first, whether the child had “imagi-nary playmates” and, second, “imaginary countries” (p.435). Out of 643 queries, he received 136 (21%) pos-itive responses to play with imaginary friends and 48(7%) positive responses to play with imaginary coun-tries (pp. 436–437). Because parents of control sub-jects were not asked to supply similar information, Ter-man had no comparative data for these forms of play inhis general population. Nonetheless he concluded on asubjective basis that “a good many gifted children havehad imaginary playmates or imaginary countries” (p.439).

In subsequent studies of very high IQ children – oneor two of whom came to researcher attention by meansof Terman’s inaugural work – Leta Hollingworth alsoappears to have made a point of soliciting informa-tion on spontaneous, self-initiated play with imaginaryfriends and imaginary countries. Of 12 cases presentedin Children Above 180 IQ, Origin and Development(1942), 2 children had imaginary friends and 3 otherchildren provided ample evidence of worldplay. (Notesin the dossiers of the remaining seven cases indicatethat these children did not invent imaginary compan-ions or countries.) At the age of 3 years, Child A in-vented “Center Land,” where children stayed up allnight, played with fire and used the elevator when-ever they wished (p. 88). Child D played in “Borning-town” from the ages of 4–7 years and spent hours “lay-ing out roads, drawing maps of its terrain, composingand recording its language (Bornish), and writing itshistory and literature” (p. 123). And Child E revealedaround the age of 8 years the existence of a privatecountry on the planet Venus inhabited by people andin possession of a navy. He revealed, too, his wish “tohave statistics of my imaginary country,” but whetherthese ever materialized remained his secret (p. 147).

The noticeable appearance of imaginary friends andimaginary countries or worlds among Hollingworth’s12 subjects and Terman’s 643 accords well with cur-rent estimates for these play behaviors. Play with imag-inary friends is currently estimated to occur amongone- to two-thirds of young children (Taylor, 1999;also Singer, 1975, p. 135; Harris, 2000, p. 32; Singer& Singer, 1990, pp. 97–100). In Terman’s time, this

kind of play carried the stigma of loneliness and isola-tion, nevertheless he was apprised of imaginary friendsin roughly a fifth of his subjects; in her much lessrepresentative sample, Hollingworth found one in sixcases. Worldplay, as discussed above, is estimated tohave occurred in the childhoods of 3–12% of collegestudents and 5–26% of MacArthur Fellows. Holling-worth’s subjects, at one-quarter incidence, reproducedthe high-end estimate; Terman’s subjects, at 7%, thelow end of imaginary world invention.

In both studies the incidence of worldplay in par-ticular relates in interesting ways to subsequent assess-ments of the creative potential or success of test sub-jects. By labeling his study the “genetic study of ge-nius,” Terman openly acknowledged his expectationthat adult eminence, by which he meant the kind ofworld-renowned creative accomplishment achieved by1 out of 4000 adults, might be attained by at leastsome of the children he studied (Burks, Jensen, &Terman, 1930, p. 4). On the whole, however, he cau-tiously conceded that to “expect all or even a majorityof [his] subjects to attain any considerable degree ofeminence would be unwarranted optimism” (Termanet al., 1925/1954, p. 640). Follow-up studies throughthe 1950s proved that caution reasonable. Terman hadcalculated in 1925 that somewhat less than 200 of hisgifted children might find their way into Who’s Who,a compilation of contemporary biographies based onoutstanding achievement of general interest. By 1959,only 31 men and 2 women from his gifted group ap-peared in that listing (Terman and Oden, 1959, pp.145–146, 150). While it was clear that many of his highIQ subjects were successful in the pursuit of intellectu-ally demanding careers (Terman and Oden, 1959, pp.43–152), few had made notable contribution to theirprofessions and none had achieved the eminence of ac-knowledged genius (Subotnik et al., 1993, p. 117). Ter-man’s study group, largely selected for intellectual gift-edness with a smaller pool selected for “special abil-ity,” was not in fact characterized by unusual creativecapacity.

Indeed, even before the start of his longitudinalstudies, Terman was privy to evidence that creativequalities were probably distinct from the kinds ofintelligence measured by IQ tests (Ochse, 1990, p.204). Studies at the end of the 19th century andthe turn of the 20th century suggested that logicalpower and original imagination did not necessarily gohand in hand (Getzels & Jackson, 1962, p. 4). Many


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psychologists drew the same conclusion in decadesfollowing. In compensation, researchers in 1960sand 1970s set about analyzing creative ability andproducing tests specifically developed to measure itsdifferent aspects (Ochse, 1990, pp. 202–206, 211–212). Perhaps the best known of these are the TorranceTests of Creative Thinking (TTCT), a battery of timedtasks based upon concepts of fluency, flexibility andoriginality in creative thinking (Ochse, 1990, p. 205)and used widely in educational and corporate settingstoday. But like the IQ tests that the TTCT and otherbatteries were meant to supplement, creativity testshave proved inadequate in identifying creative talent,potential or otherwise. Indeed, as many critics havepointed out, the tasks set in these structured tests resisttruly creative solution and bear little or no relation toreal-world creative accomplishment (Ochse, 1990, p.45; Tannenbaum, 1992, p. 13).

This being the case, some researchers have pro-posed that creative ability in children should not beidentified by the artificial means of timed tests, butby the natural means of prodigious behavior itself.Typically identified in math, music, chess or language,prodigies recognizably demonstrate near-adult levelsof talent at an early age (Feldman, 1986, p. 16). ForTannenbaum, such precocious accomplishment isa particularly powerful indicator precisely because“it is openly masterful now rather than a remotesymptom of promise for the future” (1992, p. 13).The prodigy, however, is not necessarily creative. AsFeldman (1986) and others point out, unusual capacityfor music or math performance is not the same asunusual capacity to produce new music or solve newproblems that transform either field (Feldman, pp. 13,15; Sternberg and Lubart, 1992, p. 34). When it comesto productive creativity in math or music, the child isnecessarily at a disadvantage in these adult fields ofendeavor. It makes far more sense to identify creativepotential in children by tracking self-initiated andself-sustained creative behaviors that are particular tochildhood itself.

In essence, Hollingworth did just that when she at-tempted to evaluate the creative capacities of her 12high IQ subjects. Though many researchers consid-ered juvenile activity in the conventional arts an ad-equate indication of “creativeness,” she felt it neces-sary to account for a much wider range of childhoodoriginality, the signs of which were often missing in“ordinary records and histories” (Hollingworth, 1942,

p. 236). Accordingly, she looked for the invention ofgames and languages, for idiosyncratic classificationsof knowledge, for spontaneous collections, mechanicalconstructions and other forms of extracurricular activ-ity – many of which were the province of childhood.

Not surprisingly, the invention of imaginary coun-tries in childhood, related as it was in many cases to“constructive originality” – i.e., the drawing of maps,writing of stories or the classifications of invented lan-guage – figured largely in her calculations of the “cre-ativeness” of her subjects. Hollingworth subjectivelyrated a third of her high IQ cases as notably cre-ative and one-third as moderately creative; the finalthird demonstrated no marked creativity at all. Twoof the four children in the notably creative group –Child A and Child D – had invented imaginary worldswhen young. She assigned Child E, who also did so,to the moderately creative group (p. 240). The edu-cation of Child E, she opined, had been strictly di-rected down conventional academic channels, at theexpense of originality. Given her conclusion that intel-lectual training might be at odds with childhood cre-ativity (p. 241), and the modus operandi Hollingworthadopted for assessing that creative potential, it is tempt-ing to indulge in a bit of counter-historical specula-tion. If Terman had paid as much attention to the un-expected appearance of play with imaginary compan-ions and countries in his subjects’ background – andif he had selected more of his “special ability” sub-jects on the basis of extraordinarily complex imagina-tive play that was also inventive – he may well haveincreased the overall creative potential of his studygroup.

This is not to argue that all children who inventimagined places will grow up to revolutionize fieldsof endeavor or carve out new disciplines. But thenagain, neither do most children with high IQs or re-markable talents. We should not expect any one mea-sure, including the complex elaboration of an inventedworld in childhood, to translate consistently into ex-traordinary achievement in adulthood (Terman et al.,1925/1954, p. 640). “For gifted children to develop intocreative achievers,” Ochse (1990) has observed, “theirgifts must become transformed into skills and drivesthat enable them to produce something of value” to theculture at large (p. 31). The creative practice, the con-structive skills, the knowledge base gained in world-play – any or all of these must also become harnessedto goal-directed work within adult disciplines.


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Table 29.3 Age of Onset of Worldplay Among Sampled MacArthur Fellows

Early childhood(3–6, 7 years)

Middle childhood(6, 7–12, 13 years)

Late childhood(12, 13 years)

Unknown Total

# Plays 8 15 3 2 28% 29 54 11 7 101

Table 29.4 Duration of Worldplay Among Sampled MacArthur Fellows

Early childhood Middle childhood Late childhood Unknown Total x/28

Onset (# plays) 8 15 3 2 28Duration: Early (8) 8 29%: Middle (7) (15) 22 79%: Late (1) (4) (3) 8 29%Note: Values in parenthesis refer to # of on set plays at head of column with specified duration.

The point remains, however, that in full-blownworldplay the potential for self-initiated productivecreativity actualizes in childhood itself. And to theextent that productive creativity depends on learnedrather than innate traits, its early appearance in the lifeof an individual augurs well for its mature continuancein one form or another. Creativity predicts creativity.The self-initiated and self-sustained invention ofworlds may thus prove effective in identifying childrenwho are significantly more likely than those who do notexhibit inventive play to engage as adults in creativework within disciplines, at the forefront of disciplinesor in the unknown territory that lies between.

Recognizing and Nurturing Worldplay

Worldplay warrants notice in the selection processesof gifted programs. It also warrants encouragementin educational and familial settings, if only to bringto adult attention more children who delight and per-sist in creative play. A sense of when and where tofind worldplay should aid in that exercise. Ongoingresearch on the worldplay experiences of MacArthurFellows confirms the developmental pattern discernedby Silvey, MacKeith and Cohen. Among sampled Fel-lows, nearly a third of imaginary worlds were inventedin early childhood, over half were invented in middlechildhood and a tenth were newly constructed in late

childhood (see Table 29.3). Because the greater part ofearly childhood worlds lasted into middle childhood,and some worlds invented in middle childhood lastedinto late childhood, the duration of worldplay amongsampled Fellows resembled a bell curve: nearly one-third of all invented worlds were played during earlychildhood, one-third again were played in late child-hood, while over three-quarters were played in middlechildhood (see Table 29.4).

Worldplay peaks in middle childhood, yet certainother characteristics of that play tend to hide it fromready view. In the first place, about two-thirds of imag-ined worlds invented by sampled Fellows were de-scribed as solitary play. No more than a quarter weredescribed as shared with one or two intimates and onlyone invented world was described as a social or publicgame involving a larger and non-select group of peers(see Table 29.5).

In the second place, worldplay is often experien-tially invisible as well as socially aloof, although insome cases the formation of imaginary place is tied insome way to physical place in the real world. Some-what over one-third of imaginary worlds invented bysampled Fellows were partially instantiated in “specialplaces” found in the house or out-of-doors, in habitable“forts” constructed from natural or man-made materi-als or in miniature places modeled with toys, blocks orother appropriated materials (see Table 29.6). Thoughfound places, forts and models might draw the notice ofothers (e.g., Van Manen & Levering, 1996; Hart, 1979),

Table 29.5 Social Context of Worldplay Among Sampled MacArthur Fellows

Solitary Shared Social/public Unknown Total

# Plays 18 7 1 2 28% 64 25 4 7 100


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Table 29.6 Place Formation in Worldplay Among Sampled MacArthur Fellows

Found/constructed Modeled Wholly imagined Unknown Total

# Plays 2 8 13 5 28% 7 29 46 18 100

in worldplay these locales often serve as foundationfor further elaboration of place in private imagination.Worldplay is even more invisible for those worlds nottied to physical place. Among sampled Fellows, nearlyone-half of invented worlds appear to have been whollyconceived in the mind alone (Table 29.6). Whether par-tially or fully imagined, much of worldplay is internal-ized and unavailable to any but intimate others, if suchexist, collaboratively engaged in shared play. As withother forms of complex imaginative play (Gross, 2004,p. 132), unengaged observers may be wholly unawareof its character or complexity.

One final characteristic adds psychological distanceto social seclusion and experiential invisibility. In themajority of cases, worldplay tends to be kept secretfrom parents and other adults. One-fifth of worlds in-vented by MacArthur Fellows were considered secret;an additional one-fifth or so were considered semi-secret, that is, the Fellow as a child knew or assumedthat parents knew about the world, yet reference tothe play was never overt (see Table 29.7). This sug-gests that solitary or shared play with imagined worldswas at least private over one-third of the time, that is,without adult guidance, interference or influence. VanManen & Levering (1996) argue that privacy gainedfrom secrecy or near-secrecy not only characterizes agreat deal of play in middle childhood but nurtures thegrowth of the self as an independent agent capable ofautonomous thought and action (pp. 8, 74, 89 and pas-sim). Even in cases where Fellows did not keep world-play a secret from parents, and overt discussion tookplace, revelation was not meant to violate the owner-ship of private play. In one instance, a Fellow disclosedher imaginary world to her mother. “She was very en-couraging and liked that I imagined things. I didn’t likeit when she referred to it, though. . .” When her mothertried to involve another sibling in the make-believe,the Fellow continued, “I was completely enraged and

felt betrayed” (as cited in M. Root-Bernstein & Root-Bernstein, 2006). The disclosure to parent had not beenmeant to alter access to or creative control of the imag-inative play.

By its very nature, then, worldplay may slip underthe adult radar, to the benefit of the child creator. Inany enterprise to take more notice of the phenomenon,therefore, a general caveat is appropriate. Under no cir-cumstances should parents or teachers interfere withthis play at the expense of the child’s privacy and con-trol. What is needed is a hands-off, yet supportive,environment – one that encourages imaginative play,makes time and requested materials available, and pro-tects solitary or shared play from the blandishments ofsocially engaged peers and misguided adults. Indeed,worldplay ought to be tolerated as long as the childwishes to pursue it, which may mean in some casesresisting pressures to inhibit solitary or shared imagi-native play in adolescent or teenage years in favor ofsocial play of one kind or another.

In addition to protecting spontaneous worldplay,parents and especially teachers may also wish to en-courage or promote the invention of imaginary placesand people. Various approaches to the group designof possible, impossible and utopian worlds have beenused in elementary classrooms as a means of teachingthe learnable processes of creative endeavor (e.g., Mur-phy, 1974; Shekerjian, 1990, p. 22; Sobel, 1993). Ob-viously, in a school setting where worldplay forms partof the curriculum its nurture may be somewhat differ-ent. Teachers must necessarily set the general task, pro-vide materials, and promote collaboration and cooper-ation, all the while taking care to allow the individualimagination free range. This does not mean that “any-thing goes” in classroom worldplay. Analogue worldsdepend upon an acquired knowledge of geographies,social customs, political systems, etc. They depend,too, on the production of artifacts that document that

Table 29.7 Secrecy of Worldplay Among Sampled MacArthur Fellows

Secret Semi-secret Not secret Unknown Total

# Plays 6 5 7 10 28% 21 18 25 36 100


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analogue world: maps, stories, histories, crafts, mod-els, etc. It is perfectly reasonable, indeed advisable, toset standards of excellence for the evaluation of theseworldplay documents. It is even reasonable to assess –or have students self-assess – the internal consistencyof the imagined world, as revealed by an array of docu-ments. At the same time, it is unreasonable to evaluateor judge the imaginative leaps that tie consistency orverisimilitude to the impossible. Woe to the adult whotells a future Bronte that a Glass Town is nowhere to befound on the African continent.

Finally, parents and teachers may undertake toencourage children to elaborate upon the imaginaryworlds they encounter in books, movies, board games,video simulation games such as SimCityTM and evenonline virtual world games. While these pursuits inand of themselves stimulate imaginative participationin invented worlds, the child’s part in that inventionremains largely a passive or, at any rate, a reactiveone. The child consumes a world imagined by othersand does not construct or create her own. Unless shefurthers the play experience in book or video gameby adding to it some imaginative construction thatis under her full creative control, she is not engagedin the creative behaviors and processes of imaginaryworld invention.

Conclusion

Worldplay is here characterized as a complex form ofimaginative play, peaking in middle childhood, engag-ing the child in creative behaviors that anticipate adultcreative processes and potentially preparing the childfor mature creative achievement in a variety of disci-plines. In the sciences, social sciences and arts, espe-cially, worldplay in childhood may be significantly as-sociated with adult creative giftedness. It follows thatworldplay may also be a sign of creative giftedness inchildhood.

Further research will be necessary, however, to de-termine whether worldplay, as an indicator of creativegiftedness, is or is not independent from other indi-cators of giftedness, particularly the IQ measures ofintellectual precocity. Despite the suppositions of Ter-man and Hollingworth, no systematic study has as yetlinked worldplay – or indeed any other form of highly

imaginative play – to high, moderate or disparate levelsof IQ.

Further research may also compare the creativeapprenticeship to be had in worldplay with disciplinaryapprenticeships often experienced by highly preco-cious learners and prodigies. Though some prodigiesmay invent imaginary worlds, it is likely that creativegiftedness in childhood, as measured by worldplay, issubstantially different from intellectual giftedness inmathematics and languages or technical giftedness inmusic performance and chess.

Indeed, the most important difference may be this:Prodigies are usually specialists in learning and talent(Feldman, 1986, pp. 9–11). Worldplayers are, by wayof contrast, generalists, developing the multiple skillsof the polymath (see R. Root-Bernstein, this volume).The inventor of imaginary worlds typically constructs avariety of narrative and systemic elaborations. He maywrite stories, compose music and draw maps or buildmodels, design games and construct languages – andthus engage in early introduction to expressive tech-niques and intellectual skills of several different kinds.

Within this general panoply of productive endeavor,special attention may also focus on the development ofone craft or another, as was certainly the case for theBronte sisters in writing – though it is worth notingthat all three sisters, as children, drew as well as theywrote and Charlotte, along with her brother, actuallyharbored dreams of becoming an artist (Barker, 1997,p. 213). For other individuals, specialization within thegeneral framework of worldplay may be found not incraft, per se, but in the compelling interests of that play,whether these are anthropological, linguistic, philo-sophical or scientific in nature. Hollingworth’s ChildD focused for some time on what he called “wordicalwork,” which involved not only the invention and clas-sification of his Bornish language but the exploration of“concepts and [. . .] words to express them that are notbe found in dictionaries” (1942, p. 126). In her investi-gations of early forms of clothing, shelter and cuisine,M. developed keen interest in the evolution of culture(personal communication).

Phenomenological report suggests that this im-mersion in an array of intellectual interests andexpressive crafts exercises creative behaviors thatprepare the child for mature contribution in thesciences, social sciences and humanities as well asin the arts. This is as it should be for any indicatorof general creative giftedness. Creative novelty, pro-


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duced in the combustive union of hitherto disparateelements, presupposes unusual breadth of experience,often across very different disciplines (M. Root-Bernstein & Root-Bernstein, 2003; Root-Bernstein,Bernstein, & Garnier, 1995; R. Root-Bernstein &Root-Bernstein, 2004; Sternberg, 2003, pp. 114,126). Effective novelty requires focus and persistence(Ghiselin, 1954, pp. 15–20; Plucker & Beghetto, 2004,pp. 160–161; Sternberg, 2005, p. 304). By channel-ing the individual’s capacity for make-believe intothe polymathic invention of an imaginary cosmos,involving the internally consistent particularizationof its many aspects over a persistent period of time,worldplay may stimulate both the generalist and thespecialist.

In sum, by recognizing worldplay – and perhaps,too, other complex imaginative play – as a shootingstar, an indicator of creative behavior, society can ex-pand the nurture of creative giftedness in childhood toeventual, productive benefit in a constellation of adultdisciplines and endeavors.

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Appendix: Translation of Inscriptionon the Cave Painting, by M. (personalpapers)

On top: Once the flower is taken it is forever dead,and no flower lives in beauty but a hero diedthere.Goodbye Yeoceroee, farewell lad, you godown under the earth to Moi Covcul’s houseof flowers. We sing farewell. And your shinemakes the clouds purple and red! You say,farewell, goodbye!

Names of the figures above [from left to right]:Fiayiu, who loved her friend for his laughingspirit; Cering the mother; Yahbah the father;Sommaw the brother; Baypog the sister

Inside: Old Isk comes for young Yeoceroee, sayscome, spirit, down to the earth from whichyou came, down to the house of darkness,for now you die. And the spirit of Yeoceroeefollows old Isk the shepherd of the spiritsdown through many dark caves to the houseof Moi Covcul which has written on the wallsthe stories of the lives of all creatures. It is


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Thea who writes on the walls of the houseof truth, and Nok who keeps it. Yeoceroeecomes to the cave of flowers and greets Nok,says Brave Nok, I am Papushitohat, fleet offoot, and far have I traveled through joy andsadness before I stopped here. And Nok giveshim water to wash the hands of all desires.And to Thea he says, Sweet Thea, far haveI traveled through snow and rain before Ileft behind the world. And she gives him todrink the water of forgetting. And Yeoceroeesays to Moi Covcul, Hail, artisan, you are mygrandmother and grandfather. Says Moi Cov-cul, you come well to my house, Papushito-hat. Sleep you now here in the flowers thesoft and ending sleep of death, and awakenew.

Names of the figures below [from left to right]:Isk; Yeoceroee, son of Cering and Yahbah.The true name of his spirit is Papushitohat;Nok; Thea; Moi Covcul.

Brief Explanation of the Cave Painting

This cave painting is a tribute to a young man, Yeo-ceroee, who died. The part of the inscription beginning“Goodbye Yeoceroee. . .” is an adaptation of a song tothe sun at his setting on the holiday Bah Juebay. Thered dress and shoes of Fiayiu are marriage clothes, in-dicating that she had hoped to marry Yeoceroee. MoiCovcul means “Person Makes-All” and is believed tohave created the world. In the house of flowers he isusually depicted as a dogwood tree and an eagle. Sim-ilarly, Isk, Nok and Thea are each considered to beone being with two shapes at once: human and bat,human and ocelot, human and fairy tern. There is afourth keeper of the spirits named Giy [not pictured]who delivers inspiration and fertility, and she is associ-ated with a cuttlefish.

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Imaginary Worldplay as an Indicator of Creative Giftedness · Imaginary Worldplay as an Indicator of Creative Giftedness Michele Root-Bernstein Abstract Creative potential in childhood,