Imaginary Worlplay as an Indicator of Creative Giftedness

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Chapter 29

Imaginary Worldplay as an Indicator of Creative Giftedness

Michele Root-Bernstein

Abstract Creative potential in childhood, of a kind

bearing fruit in maturity, reveals itself in imaginative

play, the most complex of which is the invention

of imaginary worlds (paracosms). Worldplay often

includes the generation of stories, drawings, etc.,that provide evidence of little c creative behavior.

Historical examples (e.g., the Brontes) suggest that

productive worldplay may thus serve as a learning

laboratory for adult achievement. Early research

explored ties between worldplay and later artistic

endeavor. Recent study of gifted adults finds strong

links, too, between worldplay and mature creative

accomplishment in the sciences and social sciences. As

many as 1 in 30 children may invent worlds in solitary,

secret play that is hidden from ready view. Worldplay

nevertheless figured tangentially in early studies ofintellectual precocity. Improved understanding of the

phenomenon, its nature and its potential for nurture,

should bring childhood worldplay to the foreground as

an indicator of creative giftedness.

Keywords Imaginative play Imaginary worlds

Paracosm Worldplay pedagogy Productive creativ-

ity Creative process Creative behavior Creative

giftedness

Introduction

Intellectual giftedness and precocious talent appear

on the horizon of childhood with the insistence of

M. Root-Bernstein (B)

Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

e-mail: [email protected]

a shining moon or planet. People notice and ad-

mire the child who can best most adults at chess

or mathematics or perform a violin solo with the

local orchestra. Gifted programs in the schools or

private tutelage can do much to promote them both.Creative giftedness in childhood, a rather different

category of precociousness involving originality

and inventiveness (Getzels & Jackson, 1962, pp.

37; Milgram, 1990, p. 217), proves a more elu-

sive, shooting star. Efforts to identify and nurture

children with the potential for productive innovation

and invention in adulthood have largely met with

disappointment (Terman et al., 1925/1954; Terman

and 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 the

young.

The first approach is to focus on complex imagi-

native play in this case the invention of imaginary

worlds or paracosms as a potential indicator of cre-

ative behavior in general. One way to identify nascent

creative talent in children, it has been suggested, is

to examine their free-choice leisure activities outside

the classroom (Milgram, 1990, pp. 217, 228229). The

second approach is to trace the incidence of this world-

play in creative adults in order to determine the strength

of its association with mature giftedness. Though such

a retrospective study does not establish causality, it

may identify likely play behaviors for prospective and

longitudinal study. Together the two approaches sug-

gest that worldplay is an early sign in childhood of the

same creative behaviors that characterize innovative

adults at work in many fields of endeavor indeed, the

invention of imaginary worlds may in many instances

prepare experientially for mature creative achievement.

L.V. Shavinina (ed.), International Handbook on Giftedness, 599

DOI 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 dates

back to at least the early decades of the 20th cen-

tury. Initially a means of typifying the sociability of

children with precocious intellect or talent (Termanet al., 1925/1954, pp. 385, 437439), such interest has

more recently turned to characteristics of the play itself

as educators and researchers realized that the gifted are

gifted, not just during classroom hours but all the time

(Subotnik et al., 1993, p. 98). Milgram (1990) found

that 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: gifted

children read voraciously; they practiced skills related

to particular talents; they spent time drawing or danc-ing or making music, they played intricate board games

and solved challenging puzzles and they played imag-

inatively (Subotnik et al., 1993, p. 38; Klein, 1992, p.

248; Gross, 2004, pp. 130133). Gross found pretend

or fantasy play a favorite pastime among the highly

gifted children she studied, as did others. By and large,

that fantasy play was more elaborate than the pretend

play of non-gifted age-mates, involving intricate rules,

extensive plots and complex roles that unfolded over

time (Kearney, 2000). Morelock (1997) argued that

such fantasy play typically featured complex clustersof diverse concepts and facts joined logically with

flights of fancy into internally consistent conceptual

structures (p. 2). Generally speaking, in their imagi-

native play gifted children make original patchworks

of personal meaning out of their limited experience and

precocious knowledge. One way they do so is to invent

imaginary worlds of their own design.

Worldplay

Worldplay may be defined as the repeated evocation of

an imagined place (often, but not always) inhabited by

imagined 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 first

emerges in the human 2 year-old and blossoms within

the next three years. As the childs 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 of

stories heard or read in books and, at times, the invent-

ing of serial bed stories shared before sleep (Cohen &

MacKeith, 1991, pp. 107111).

For the most part, all these behaviors prove common

in early childhood (36 years). In middle childhood

(712 years), however, the simpler imaginative behav-

iors begin to drop out and more complex and inventive

forms of make-believe emerge. In general, a concomi-

tant shift also occurs in these years from the solitary

or side-by-side play of toddlers to the group play of

elementary school children, as when siblings or neigh-

borhood friends pretend to inhabit together a desert is-

land or devise narratives for secret societies. Solitary

make-believe does not disappear in middle childhood,

however. At about the time that reading becomes silent,

solitary pretend play appears to internalize in secret

daydreams 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 few

others the invention of imaginary worlds may take

place. Sometimes this worldplay grows out of earlier

imaginative pretense with animated toys or imaginary

companions; 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 and

elaborate form of make-believe in several ways. Most

childhood play is ephemeral. Children may play at

dolls or trucks, blocks or dress-up, but the scenarios

that capture their imagination for an hour or a day

invariably dissolve like gossamer when playtime ends.

Worldplay, in contrast, is more persistent; for weeks,

months or even years, the child revisits over and again

the same make-believe scenario. The imagined place

takes on a consistency of aspect, whether it is described

in ongoing narrative or proliferative system-building.

At the same time, the imaginary world tends to evolve,

as the child embellishes the adventures of particular

persons or elaborates the analogue language, geogra-

phy, history or a simulated sports league of a particular

world. Despite the childs concerted efforts to make

the 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 unable

to distinguish between imagination and reality (Cohen

& MacKeith, 1991, p. 14; Silvey & MacKeith, 1988,

pp. 173174). Worldplay is first and foremost play.

Indeed, at its most complex, it is creative play. For

the child who documents or structures the invention

of place with maps, drawings, statistical lists, written

histories, stories or any number of other constructive

artifacts, exercises creative behavior.

Worldplay as Creative Play

Creative behavior, at its most fundamental, involves the

generation 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 or

thing itself, effective refers to its subsequent reception,

for a creative idea or thing takes on a life of its own

after communication to others it fills a cultural need,

solves a social or intellectual problem recognized by

a larger group. At its most powerful, creative behav-

ior is revolutionary, producing the ideas, solutions and

inventions that recombine disciplines and technologies

or carve out new ones. Big C creativity of this sort en-

compasses the contributions of a Newton, a Gandhi, a

Joyce or an Edison. Most people, including children,

are not capable of creative impact at this worldwide

level. They are, however, capable of creative behav-

iors that generate ideas, fill needs and solve problems

within the smaller circles of ethnicity, polity, neighbor-

hood or family. Different in quality, but not necessarily

in kind, little c creativity anchors the other end of a

gradating spectrum of like behaviors.

The child who invents and elaborates an imaginary

world engages in creative behavior of the little c vari-

ety. She brings into being novel things, such as maps or

histories of a uniquely imagined place, that are person-ally effective, in that they document and structure her

conception of an analogue world. This imagined world,

if communicated to others, may also strike family and

friends even a somewhat larger community as fresh,

original and charming. Worldplays real benefit, how-

ever, does not lie in its outer, social influence. Rather,

it lies in its inner influence upon the child herself. To

invent and elaborate imaginary worlds is to develop a

sense of self as a creator by immersing oneself in cre-

ative process.

Take the contemporary case of one M. Around the

age of 9 years, she began designing a language based

on pictographs. The simple sentences and stories she

wrote out in this way supposed a simple people, whom

she 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. Much

like 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 her

imagined world. And in many moments of this imag-

inative undertaking, which persisted into her teenage

years, she engaged in one aspect or another of the cre-

ative process.

Psychologists conventionally describe that process

as involving elements or stages of preparation, incuba-

tion, insight and elaboration (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996,

pp. 7980). Suffice it to say here that time and again

M. prepared for creative endeavor by setting herself a

problem for instance, how did the Kar actually come

to write their stories? Such a problem might incubate

for 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 the

age of 12 years, the imagined development of spoken

and written language coalesced for her with the imag-

ined emergence of simple writing implements and an

imagined economy that valued narrative goods. On the

strength of such insight, M. elaborated histories of the

time . . . called the word explosion in which at a

market, a person can get a fine blanket or a pot for a

story, or more for a book. A couple of years later, in

an 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 someone

who spent their time writing stories (About Writing,

personal papers).

M.s worldplay was shot through with yet another

well-recognized ingredient of creative thinking, the

comparison and synthesis of two or more unlike

things. The discoveries of science and of art, as Jacob

Bronowski famously expressed it, are explorations

more, are explosions, of a hidden likeness (1956,

pp. 3031). The discoveries of the novice creator

also depend on recognizing similarities, even if these

appear 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 drawings

themselves represented a visual amalgamation of early

human cave art, Egyptian tomb paintings and other

ancient pictorial forms. Moreover, they nearly always

transposed or anticipated Kar stories, especially those

about the god-like beings of legend. In the marriage

of picture and story, M. manifested her personal

discovery that visual iconography is like narrative

myth is like the very foundations of an imagined

world. More often than not, the exploration and

documentation of these congruences required the

integration of what we formally recognize as distinct

forms of expression. Like many other children who

invent and elaborate imaginary worlds, M. nearly

always expressed her vision in multiple and synthetic

ways; visually, verbally, sometimes musically as well.

By her late teens, this tendency was quite marked

(Fig. 29.1 and Appendix). Indeed, the integration

of what many consider separate domains is what

distinguishes worldplay from juvenilia focused on one

recognized locus of technical talent or one recognized

body of specialized knowledge.

A History of Worldplay

M.s play in an imaginary world of her own invention

has historical antecedents. Over the past 200 years or

so, worldplay has figured as a curiosity of childhood

in the backgrounds of people likely to write memoirs

or leave personal papers of interest to others. Writers

of the 19th and 20th centuries such as Robert Louis

Stevenson, C. S. Lewis, Stanislaw Lem, W.H. Auden,

Vera Brittain and Gertrude Stein left testimony of

childhood worldplay (Goertzel & Goertzel, 1962,

p. 117n; Silvey & MacKeith, 1988, pp. 191194;

Lem,1975/1995). So did the actor Peter Ustinov

(1976/1998, pp. 276282). And the visual artist

Claes Oldenburg has revealed the imaginary land of

his 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 hero

died there. For a full translation, see Appendix


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p. 19). However, the earliest known case of a childhood

paracosm is that invented by an individual remarkable

only in childhood. Thomas Malkin, a precocious

student 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 in

1802 (Malkin, 1806/1997). Other remarkable children

who invented imaginary worlds include Malkins

near contemporary Hartley Coleridge, brilliant son of

Samuel Taylor Coleridge and inventor of Ejuxria

(Coleridge, 1851; Plotz, 2001, pp. 191251), and

Barbara Follett, who brought her young vision of

Farksolia to fruition in a precocious novel published

in 1927 (McCurdy, 1966). Exceptional children

who also achieved renown in adulthood include the

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (Forster-

Nietzsche, 1912, pp. 4647), the English writer

Thomas De Quincey (De Quincey, 1853, pp. 9798)

and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Cox, 1926/1953, p.

592).

Hands down, the best known example of worldplay

belongs to the Bronte siblings, children of the wild

moors in 19th century England. Branwell Brontes un-

quenchable enthusiasm for toy soldiers pulled him and

his three sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, into two

decades of the most elaborate and best documented

worldplay yet on record. Enacted make-believe with

toy soldiers soon made way for the manufacture of

maps, reports of military campaigns, miniature maga-

zines, drawings of people and places, and story upon

written 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. Sometime

in their teens Emily and Anne developed an offshoot

of Glass Town known as Gondal, while Branwell and

Charlotte elaborated another offshoot known as An-

gria. Even as they moved into early adulthood, all four

siblings absorbed themselves fully in this worldplay

by reading voraciously for inspiration, drawing imagi-

nary landscapes and persons, and generating hundreds

of manuscripts.

Eventually, the Bronte sisters parlayed the creative

and 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 boon

in 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, Gondal

and Angria afforded the girls (Ratchford, 1949; Evans

& Evans, 1982; Alexander, 1983; Barker, 1997). Psy-

chologists, for their part, have recognized the Bronte

example 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. 24; 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; a

high tolerance for fantasy play; and time free of other

distractions to indulge all three (McGreevy, 1995, pp.

146147, passim). And, icing on the cake, the children

consciously referred to themselves as Genii in that

learning laboratory, first as god-like participants and

later as confident and audacious creators of stories and

poems.

Instances of childhood worldplay plucked from the

past tend, by their very nature, to privilege examples

of 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 childhood

play would surely have remained a literary curiosity if

not for the link between their early juvenilia and later

artistry. But worldplay of the caliber and consequence

produced 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 in

childhood is more widespread than the rare cases of

creative eminence in mature adults with which it may

be 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 late

1970s the study which culminated in The Develop-

ment of Imagination, the Private Worlds of Childhood

(1990), was himself an inventor of an imaginary world

in childhood. The enduring personal as well as edu-

cational value of his New Hentian States intrigued

him. His play had been a spur to the acquisition of


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knowledge, he wrote, but even more, the stimulation

of curiosity (Silvey, 1977, p. 18). In the late 1970s

he began soliciting other instances of world-building

in 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 Silveys

death, Cohen & MacKeith (1991) placed 64 of these

paracosms described by 57 adults in a context of psy-

chological and creative development. In particular, they

shed 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 play

with (1) toys, (2) particular places and local commu-

nities, (3) imagined islands, countries and their peo-

ples, (4) imagined systems, documents and languages

and (5) unstructured, idyllic worlds. Some of their data

appeared to indicate that as world-inventing children

matured, their focus tended to shift from the personal

intimacy of toy families to the social interactions of

larger establishments to the increasingly abstract cul-

tural, economic and political systems that characterize

society at large or utopian visions. Two out of three

girls in the sample focused on the social and emotional

interactions of characters, while nine out of ten boys

focused 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 invention

of countries, peoples, languages or socio-political sys-

tems modeled the real world in strikingly sophisticated

fashion.

In addition to the classification of types, Cohen and

MacKeith wished to ascertain in a general way the

overall 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 some

link between the childhood invention of imaginary

worlds and adult professional achievement. In the

event, two factors seem to have convinced them that

childhood worldplay did not contribute to the creative

development of individuals in their sample. First, only

a small and disappointing number of their respondents

became writers or artists as adults. Second, apparently

no 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 solid

conclusion. Perhaps due to the weight of the Bronte

example, which, along with other historical exemplars,

suggested that worldplay most obviously prepared for

adult achievement in the literary (or perhaps other)

arts, the researchers ignored Silveys initial intuition

that the invention of imaginary worlds in childhood

might stimulate curiosity and knowledge acquisition

in general.

The oversight was critical. Silvey had drawn maps;

he had written out a history and a constitution for The

New Hentian States and produced its newspapers, al-

manacs and financial tables. He grew up to inaugurate

the new business field of audience research at the BBC,

marrying the demands of statistical inquiry to socio-

logical and psychological nuance. By any measure, he

did so successfully, too. In recognition of his achieve-

ments, he was appointed Officer of the Order of the

British Empire (OBE) in 1960, an honor granted for

valuable service in the arts, sciences and public sectors

(Silvey, 1974, pp. 193194). The connections between

worldplay, profession and professional success were

indirect, yet compelling in Silveys case. He carved a

path through audience research because he intimately

understood that a valid sample had to be selected in

such a way as to be a miniature, a scale-model, of the

universe (Silvey, 1974, p. 46). For Silvey a sample

was, in effect, an imagined world. Indeed, his experi-

ence, in contrast to that of the Brontes, suggested that

the potential benefits in maturity of childhood world-

play did not reside in technical or professional training

per se. Rather those benefits were to be found in the

general exercise of imaginative and creative behavior

that might surface in any number of professions and in

disparate measures of professional success.

Worldplay in a Population of Creative

Adults

A recent study of worldplay in childhood among adults

of recognized creative achievement tested both the in-

sights gained from Silveys personal experience and

the 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 the

relative strength of its association with a wide range of

mature disciplinary occupations; and to explore phe-

nomenologically, that is, by means of queries and inter-

views, the understanding study subjects may have had

of connection between childhood play and adult cre-

ative success in a variety of disciplines. In general, it

was 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 and

sciences.

For the purposes of this undertaking, MacArthur

Fellows 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 in

their fields of endeavor. The Foundations public recog-

nition of these individuals, as well as the terms of that

recognition, strongly argue that the Fellows as a whole

comprise a population of gifted adults. Fellowship re-

cipients were queried about their childhood play and

its connections to adult vocation and avocation.

A similar query was administered to a control group

of 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, and

the 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, students

score between 1040 and 1260 (combined scores) on the

SAT) and the student body, at least in comparison with

the MacArthur Fellows, represented a population of in-

dividuals selected for ordinary achievement.

The comparison of data from both groups yielded

the following results:

First, the study found worldplay to be more

common than hitherto supposed. The incidence

of researcher-assessed worldplay among sampled

Fellows was 26%. It remained unknown, however,

whether MacArthur Fellows who did not respond to

the query invented imaginary worlds in the same,

greater or lesser numbers. Assuming that the whole

group engaged in childhood worldplay at the same rate

as the sample, 26% was set as a maximum proportion.

Assuming that the sample in fact netted all Fellows

appointed between 1981 and 2001 with this childhood

experience, a minimum proportion was set at 5%.

Thus, the rate of worldplay in a creative population

presumably lay somewhere between 5% and 26%.

Among students, worldplay was similarly assessed at

12%. Once again, assuming that the sample incidence

represented that of the whole, 12% set a maximum

proportion of students who engaged in childhood

worldplay. Assuming that all students who participated

in worldplay responded to the questionnaire, the

minimum rate for all students in the control group was

3%. This set the range of worldplay among a general

population at 312%. By these measures, worldplay

emerged as a palpable presence in the landscape of

make-believe play, one that is potentially twice as

common among recognizably creative individuals as it

is among average university students.

Second, the data validated the expectation that

individuals inventing imaginary worlds in childhood

participate as adults in a wide variety of disci-

plines. Among MacArthur Fellows the distribution of

childhood worldplay ranged from 19% for sampled

individuals in the public issues professions and in the

sciences 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 significantly

different from the same distribution in the control

group. Students in the humanities (33%), public issues

professions (16%) and arts (15%) were more likely

than students in social sciences (8%) or sciences (6%)

to have invented imaginary worlds, by a factor of two

or more. A comparison of the two groups revealed that

the higher incidence of childhood worldplay among

Fellows in the arts, social sciences and sciences was

statistically significant (see Chart 29.1). Scientists and

social scientists selected for their creativity were more

likely to have childhood worldplay in their background

than a general population of students planning to go

into these fields.

Third, over half of the studys select and general

populations whether or not they had invented worlds

in childhood believed they engaged in some aspect

of worldplay in their adult vocations and avocations.

In the context of the query, mature worldplay referred

to participation in, or creation of, make-believe worlds

in paintings, plays, film and novels. It also referred

to 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 90 262

Positive self-reports 11 19 6 6 6 33 8 24 8 19 4 39 105

Assessed

worldplay+

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

Assessed not

worldplay+

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

% Worldplay by

professional 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 and

humanities. When it came to adult worldplay at work,

reports surfaced in every discipline (see Chart 29.2).Moreover, among those who did invent imaginary

worlds as children, many Fellows (61%) and students

(72%) saw connections between that childhood play

and their adult vocational worldplay (see Table 29.2).

MacArthur Fellow artists with worldplay in their

backgrounds 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 saw

a connection to anticipated adult worldplay at work

in the social sciences, arts, public issues professionsand humanities from 60% to 100% of the time;

none anticipated connection to projected work in the

sciences.

By and large, student perceptions suggested that ties

between childhood worldplay and adult endeavor are

readily 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


9/18


Chart 29.2 Worldplay inAdult Work: MacArthur

Fellows and MSU Students.

For full discussion of the data

and interpretation of results,

see M. Root-Bernstein &

Root-Bernstein (2006)

30

50**

***

**

*** *

58

11

31

40

46

21

38

6

39

27

0ARTS HUM PUB SOC SCI TOTAL

BLACK = MacARTHUR FELLOWS

GRAY = MSU STUDENTS

* = p


10/18


(R. Root-Bernstein & Root-Bernstein, 1999). Without

these skills, creative thinking is compromised.

Second, worldplay may exercise the capacity for

continued imaginative play, especially in older chil-

dren, well after the intense exploration of make-believe

in early childhood typically fades. Play and the knack

for 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 realistic

or fantastic.

Fourth, because it does so by tying the exigencies of

convergent problem solving to the divergent efferves-

cence of play, worldplay may nurture both the ability

and 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 define

problems not yet conceived and set them in appropri-

ate context. In this venture, as Einstein famously put it,

Imagination is more important than knowledge (as

cited in Calaprice, 2000).

And fifth, worldplay may provide early training in

the invention of culture by bridging the gap between

a virtual imagination and a creative one. The virtual

imagination is one in which the conceived idea remains

personal, 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 terms

of adult creative endeavor sets aright certain mis-

conceptions of worldplay in earlier research. Among

adults recognized for creative giftedness, worldplay

may, at a maximum, figure in childhood play in as

many as one out of four. This is more than twice the

maximal rate projected for the population at large.

Moreover, childhood worldplay may be associated

with adult creative achievement in a far wider arena

than literary or artistic accomplishment alone. The

enduring benefit to adults of childhood worldplay does

not lie necessarily or only in an early immersion in

technical skills such as writing or drawing. It lies, as

well, in the early immersion in self-prescribed learn-

ing laboratories, in self-taught creative behaviors

and in self-nurtured attributes of creative personality.

Worldplay may thus serve as a general preparation

for creative achievement in the humanities, social

sciences, and the sciences as well as in the arts. It may

also serve, at times, as a specific apprenticeship in

craft, especially for the arts.

Psychologists have long sought in the backgrounds

of creative individuals the factors that may have

foreshadowed or shaped their mature contributions

and prominence (e.g., Ellis, 1904; Cox, 1926/1953;

Cobb, 1977; Goertzel & Goertzel, 1962; and others

mentioned in Hollingworth, 1942, pp. 1518). World-

play, as a highly recognizable instance of complex

imaginative play, may be added to that list.

Worldplay as a Sign of Creative

Giftedness in Childhood

To the extent that worldplay predicts mature creativity,

it follows that it also indicates creative giftedness in

childhood. 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 to

supplement objective measures of intellectual gifted-

ness (such as high IQ), as well as subjective measures

of superior technical talent (such as math or musical

prodigiousness) presently in use. Certainly the playful,

imaginative and problem-solving aspects of worldplay

in childhood, as well as its characteristic signs of imag-

inative absorption, free-choice learning and passionate

persistence, 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 worldplay

indeed draws our attention to children who early im-

merse themselves in imaginative problem generationand problem solving for the fun of it and thus aids in

early recognition of true creative potential.

Recognition of complex imaginative play in general

and of worldplay in particular marks a return of a kind

to the earliest research in the characteristics of gifted

children. In the early 1920s, Lewis Terman made an

attempt to characterize the play life of the 643 gifted

children selected for superior all-round intelligence

and superior special talent who made up his study

group (Terman et al., 1925/1954, pp. 385439). Most


11/18


concerned with physical versus intellectual and social

versus 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. 436437). Because parents of control sub-

jects were not asked to supply similar information, Ter-

man had no comparative data for these forms of play in

his general population. Nonetheless he concluded on a

subjective basis that a good many gifted children have

had imaginary playmates or imaginary countries (p.

439).

In subsequent studies of very high IQ children one

or two of whom came to researcher attention by means

of Termans inaugural work Leta Hollingworth also

appears to have made a point of soliciting informa-

tion on spontaneous, self-initiated play with imaginary

friends and imaginary countries. Of 12 cases presented

in Children Above 180 IQ, Origin and Development

(1942), 2 children had imaginary friends and 3 other

children provided ample evidence of worldplay. (Notes

in the dossiers of the remaining seven cases indicate

that 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 all

night, played with fire and used the elevator when-

ever they wished (p. 88). Child D played in Borning-

town from the ages of 47 years and spent hours lay-

ing out roads, drawing maps of its terrain, composing

and recording its language (Bornish), and writing its

history and literature (p. 123). And Child E revealed

around the age of 8 years the existence of a private

country on the planet Venus inhabited by people and

in possession of a navy. He revealed, too, his wish to

have statistics of my imaginary country, but whether

these ever materialized remained his secret (p. 147).

The noticeable appearance of imaginary friends and

imaginary countries or worlds among Hollingworths

12 subjects and Termans 643 accords well with cur-

rent estimates for these play behaviors. Play with imag-

inary friends is currently estimated to occur among

one- to two-thirds of young children (Taylor, 1999;

also Singer, 1975, p. 135; Harris, 2000, p. 32; Singer

& Singer, 1990, pp. 97100). In Termans time, this

kind of play carried the stigma of loneliness and isola-

tion, nevertheless he was apprised of imaginary friends

in roughly a fifth of his subjects; in her much less

representative sample, Hollingworth found one in six

cases. Worldplay, as discussed above, is estimated to

have occurred in the childhoods of 312% of college

students and 526% of MacArthur Fellows. Holling-

worths subjects, at one-quarter incidence, reproduced

the high-end estimate; Termans subjects, at 7%, the

low 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 expectation

that adult eminence, by which he meant the kind of

world-renowned creative accomplishment achieved by

1 out of 4000 adults, might be attained by at least

some 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 majority

of [his] subjects to attain any considerable degree of

eminence would be unwarranted optimism (Terman

et al., 1925/1954, p. 640). Follow-up studies through

the 1950s proved that caution reasonable. Terman had

calculated in 1925 that somewhat less than 200 of his

gifted children might find their way into Whos Who,

a compilation of contemporary biographies based on

outstanding 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.

145146, 150). While it was clear that many of his high

IQ subjects were successful in the pursuit of intellectu-

ally demanding careers (Terman and Oden, 1959, pp.

43152), few had made notable contribution to their

professions and none had achieved the eminence of ac-

knowledged genius (Subotnik et al., 1993, p. 117). Ter-

mans study group, largely selected for intellectual gift-

edness with a smaller pool selected for special abil-

ity, was not in fact characterized by unusual creative

capacity.

Indeed, even before the start of his longitudinal

studies, Terman was privy to evidence that creative

qualities were probably distinct from the kinds of

intelligence measured by IQ tests (Ochse, 1990, p.

204). Studies at the end of the 19th century and

the turn of the 20th century suggested that logical

power and original imagination did not necessarily go

hand in hand (Getzels & Jackson, 1962, p. 4). Many


12/18


psychologists drew the same conclusion in decades

following. In compensation, researchers in 1960s

and 1970s set about analyzing creative ability and

producing tests specifically developed to measure its

different aspects (Ochse, 1990, pp. 202206, 211

212). Perhaps the best known of these are the Torrance

Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT), a battery of timed

tasks based upon concepts of fluency, flexibility and

originality in creative thinking (Ochse, 1990, p. 205)

and used widely in educational and corporate settings

today. But like the IQ tests that the TTCT and other

batteries were meant to supplement, creativity tests

have proved inadequate in identifying creative talent,

potential or otherwise. Indeed, as many critics have

pointed out, the tasks set in these structured tests resist

truly creative solution and bear little or no relation to

real-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 be

identified by the artificial means of timed tests, but

by the natural means of prodigious behavior itself.

Typically identified in math, music, chess or language,

prodigies recognizably demonstrate near-adult levels

of talent at an early age (Feldman, 1986, p. 16). For

Tannenbaum, such precocious accomplishment is

a particularly powerful indicator precisely because

it is openly masterful now rather than a remote

symptom of promise for the future (1992, p. 13).

The prodigy, however, is not necessarily creative. As

Feldman (1986) and others point out, unusual capacity

for music or math performance is not the same as

unusual capacity to produce new music or solve new

problems that transform either field (Feldman, pp. 13,

15; Sternberg and Lubart, 1992, p. 34). When it comes

to productive creativity in math or music, the child is

necessarily at a disadvantage in these adult fields of

endeavor. It makes far more sense to identify creative

potential in children by tracking self-initiated and

self-sustained creative behaviors that are particular to

childhood itself.

In essence, Hollingworth did just that when she at-

tempted to evaluate the creative capacities of her 12

high 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 childhood

originality, the signs of which were often missing in

ordinary records and histories (Hollingworth, 1942,

p. 236). Accordingly, she looked for the invention of

games and languages, for idiosyncratic classifications

of knowledge, for spontaneous collections, mechanical

constructions 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 subjectively

rated a third of her high IQ cases as notably cre-

ative and one-third as moderately creative; the final

third demonstrated no marked creativity at all. Two

of the four children in the notably creative group

Child A and Child D had invented imaginary worlds

when 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 the

expense of originality. Given her conclusion that intel-

lectual training might be at odds with childhood cre-

ativity (p. 241), and the modus operandi Hollingworth

adopted 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 and

if 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 have

increased the overall creative potential of his study

group.

This is not to argue that all children who invent

imagined places will grow up to revolutionize fields

of endeavor or carve out new disciplines. But then

again, 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 invented

world in childhood, to translate consistently into ex-

traordinary achievement in adulthood (Terman et al.,

1925/1954, p. 640). For gifted children to develop into

creative achievers, Ochse (1990) has observed, their

gifts must become transformed into skills and drives

that enable them to produce something of value to the

culture 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 harnessed

to goal-directed work within adult disciplines.


13/18


Table 29.3 Age of Onset of Worldplay Among Sampled MacArthur Fellows

Early childhood

(36, 7 years)

Middle childhood

(6, 712, 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 28

Duration: Early (8) 8 29%

: Middle (7) (15) 22 79%

: Late (1) (4) (3) 8 29%

Note: Values in parenthesis refer to # of onset plays at head of column with specified duration.

The point remains, however, that in full-blown

worldplay the potential for self-initiated productive

creativity actualizes in childhood itself. And to the

extent that productive creativity depends on learnedrather than innate traits, its early appearance in the life

of an individual augurs well for its mature continuance

in one form or another. Creativity predicts creativity.

The self-initiated and self-sustained invention of

worlds may thus prove effective in identifying children

who are significantly more likely than those who do not

exhibit inventive play to engage as adults in creative

work within disciplines, at the forefront of disciplines

or in the unknown territory that lies between.

Recognizing and Nurturing Worldplay

Worldplay warrants notice in the selection processes

of gifted programs. It also warrants encouragement

in educational and familial settings, if only to bring

to adult attention more children who delight and per-

sist in creative play. A sense of when and where to

find worldplay should aid in that exercise. Ongoing

research on the worldplay experiences of MacArthur

Fellows confirms the developmental pattern discernedby Silvey, MacKeith and Cohen. Among sampled Fel-

lows, nearly a third of imaginary worlds were invented

in early childhood, over half were invented in middle

childhood and a tenth were newly constructed in late

childhood (see Table 29.3). Because the greater part of

early childhood worlds lasted into middle childhood,

and some worlds invented in middle childhood lasted

into late childhood, the duration of worldplay amongsampled Fellows resembled a bell curve: nearly one-

third of all invented worlds were played during early

childhood, one-third again were played in late child-

hood, while over three-quarters were played in middle

childhood (see Table 29.4).

Worldplay peaks in middle childhood, yet certain

other characteristics of that play tend to hide it from

ready 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 were

described as shared with one or two intimates and onlyone invented world was described as a social or public

game 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 in

some cases the formation of imaginary place is tied in

some way to physical place in the real world. Some-

what over one-third of imaginary worlds invented by

sampled Fellows were partially instantiated in special

places 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 or

other appropriated materials (see Table 29.6). Though

found places, forts and models might draw the notice of

others (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


14/18


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 not

tied to physical place. Among sampled Fellows, nearly

one-half of invented worlds appear to have been wholly

conceived 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 such

exist, collaboratively engaged in shared play. As with

other forms of complex imaginative play (Gross, 2004,

p. 132), unengaged observers may be wholly unaware

of its character or complexity.One final characteristic adds psychological distance

to social seclusion and experiential invisibility. In the

majority of cases, worldplay tends to be kept secret

from 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 assumed

that parents knew about the world, yet reference to

the play was never overt (see Table 29.7). This sug-

gests that solitary or shared play with imagined worlds

was at least private over one-third of the time, that is,without adult guidance, interference or influence. Van

Manen & Levering (1996) argue that privacy gained

from secrecy or near-secrecy not only characterizes a

great deal of play in middle childhood but nurtures the

growth of the self as an independent agent capable of

autonomous 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 took

place, revelation was not meant to violate the owner-

ship of private play. In one instance, a Fellow disclosed

her imaginary world to her mother. She was very en-couraging and liked that I imagined things. I didnt like

it when she referred to it, though. . . When her mother

tried 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 been

meant to alter access to or creative control of the imag-

inative play.

By its very nature, then, worldplay may slip under

the adult radar, to the benefit of the child creator. In

any enterprise to take more notice of the phenomenon,

therefore, a general caveat is appropriate. Under no cir-

cumstances should parents or teachers interfere with

this play at the expense of the childs 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 of

socially engaged peers and misguided adults. Indeed,

worldplay ought to be tolerated as long as the child

wishes to pursue it, which may mean in some cases

resisting pressures to inhibit solitary or shared imagi-

native play in adolescent or teenage years in favor of

social 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 design

of possible, impossible and utopian worlds have been

used in elementary classrooms as a means of teaching

the 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 part

of 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 individual

imagination free range. This does not mean that any-thing goes in classroom worldplay. Analogue worlds

depend 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


15/18


analogue world: maps, stories, histories, crafts, mod-

els, etc. It is perfectly reasonable, indeed advisable, to

set standards of excellence for the evaluation of these

worldplay documents. It is even reasonable to assess

or have students self-assess the internal consistency

of the imagined world, as revealed by an array of docu-

ments. At the same time, it is unreasonable to evaluate

or judge the imaginative leaps that tie consistency or

verisimilitude to the impossible. Woe to the adult who

tells a future Bronte that a Glass Town is nowhere to be

found on the African continent.

Finally, parents and teachers may undertake to

encourage children to elaborate upon the imaginary

worlds they encounter in books, movies, board games,

video simulation games such as SimCityTM and even

online virtual world games. While these pursuits in

and of themselves stimulate imaginative participation

in invented worlds, the childs part in that invention

remains largely a passive or, at any rate, a reactive

one. The child consumes a world imagined by others

and does not construct or create her own. Unless she

furthers the play experience in book or video game

by adding to it some imaginative construction that

is under her full creative control, she is not engaged

in the creative behaviors and processes of imaginary

world invention.

Conclusion

Worldplay is here characterized as a complex form of

imaginative play, peaking in middle childhood, engag-

ing the child in creative behaviors that anticipate adult

creative processes and potentially preparing the child

for 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 that

worldplay may also be a sign of creative giftedness in

childhood.

Further research will be necessary, however, to de-

termine whether worldplay, as an indicator of creative

giftedness, is or is not independent from other indi-

cators of giftedness, particularly the IQ measures of

intellectual precocity. Despite the suppositions of Ter-

man and Hollingworth, no systematic study has as yet

linked worldplay or indeed any other form of highly

imaginative play to high, moderate or disparate levels

of IQ.

Further research may also compare the creative

apprenticeship to be had in worldplay with disciplinary

apprenticeships often experienced by highly preco-

cious learners and prodigies. Though some prodigies

may invent imaginary worlds, it is likely that creative

giftedness in childhood, as measured by worldplay, is

substantially different from intellectual giftedness in

mathematics and languages or technical giftedness in

music performance and chess.

Indeed, the most important difference may be this:

Prodigies are usually specialists in learning and talent

(Feldman, 1986, pp. 911). Worldplayers are, by way

of contrast, generalists, developing the multiple skills

of the polymath (see R. Root-Bernstein, this volume).

The inventor of imaginary worlds typically constructs a

variety of narrative and systemic elaborations. He may

write stories, compose music and draw maps or build

models, design games and construct languages and

thus 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 of

one craft or another, as was certainly the case for the

Bronte sisters in writing though it is worth noting

that all three sisters, as children, drew as well as they

wrote and Charlotte, along with her brother, actually

harbored dreams of becoming an artist (Barker, 1997,

p. 213). For other individuals, specialization within the

general framework of worldplay may be found not in

craft, per se, but in the compelling interests of that play,

whether these are anthropological, linguistic, philo-

sophical or scientific in nature. Hollingworths Child

D focused for some time on what he called wordical

work, 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

not to be found in dictionaries (1942, p. 126). In her

investigations 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 and

expressive crafts exercises creative behaviors that

prepare the child for mature contribution in the

sciences, social sciences and humanities as well as

in the arts. This is as it should be for any indicator

of general creative giftedness. Creative novelty, pro-


16/18


duced in the combustive union of hitherto disparate

elements, 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. 1520; Plucker & Beghetto, 2004,

pp. 160161; Sternberg, 2005, p. 304). By channel-

ing the individuals capacity for make-believe into

the polymathic invention of an imaginary cosmos,

involving the internally consistent particularization

of its many aspects over a persistent period of time,

worldplay may stimulate both the generalist and the

specialist.

In sum, by recognizing worldplay and perhaps,

too, other complex imaginative play as a shooting

star, an indicator of creative behavior, society can ex-

pand the nurture of creative giftedness in childhood to

eventual, productive benefit in a constellation of adult

disciplines and endeavors.

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Appendix: Translation of Inscription

on 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 died

there.

Goodbye Yeoceroee, farewell lad, you go

down under the earth to Moi Covculs house

of flowers. We sing farewell. And your shine

makes 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, says

come, spirit, down to the earth from which

you came, down to the house of darkness,

for now you die. And the spirit of Yeoceroee

follows old Isk the shepherd of the spirits

down through many dark caves to the house

of Moi Covcul which has written on the walls

the stories of the lives of all creatures. It is


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Thea who writes on the walls of the house

of truth, and Nok who keeps it. Yeoceroee

comes to the cave of flowers and greets Nok,

says Brave Nok, I am Papushitohat, fleet of

foot, and far have I traveled through joy and

sadness before I stopped here. And Nok gives

him water to wash the hands of all desires.

And to Thea he says, Sweet Thea, far have

I traveled through snow and rain before I

left behind the world. And she gives him to

drink the water of forgetting. And Yeoceroee

says to Moi Covcul, Hail, artisan, you are my

grandmother and grandfather. Says Moi Cov-

cul, you come well to my house, Papushito-

hat. Sleep you now here in the flowers the

soft and ending sleep of death, and awake

new.

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 to

the sun at his setting on the holiday Bah Juebay. The

red dress and shoes of Fiayiu are marriage clothes, in-

dicating that she had hoped to marry Yeoceroee. Moi

Covcul means Person Makes-All and is believed to

have created the world. In the house of flowers he is

usually depicted as a dogwood tree and an eagle. Sim-

ilarly, Isk, Nok and Thea are each considered to be

one being with two shapes at once: human and bat,

human and ocelot, human and fairy tern. There is a

fourth keeper of the spirits named Giy [not pictured]

who delivers inspiration and fertility, and she is associ-

ated with a cuttlefish.

Documents

Imaginary Worlplay as an Indicator of Creative Giftedness