Psychology of Music Learning

Miksza

CREATIVITY

Hickey (2002)

• A creative product– One that is both novel (to its creator) and is

“appropriate” or “valuable” in the context of a domain, and a creative person is one who produces creative products (p. 398)

• Creative thinking as a cognitive act connected to a tangible, albeit novel, product (p. 398)

Hickey (2002)

• Is creativity a general trait or content specific?

• Varied results of studies comparing various manifestations of creativity are in part the result of different measurement systems

Hickey (2002)

• History– Guilford (1950) address to the APA– Direct influence on Torrance (1996) and

Tests of Creative Thinking• Verbal and figural forms• Fluency - quantity of responses• Flexibility - different response categories• Originality - unique relative to others• Elaboration - details of response

Hickey (2002)

• Doig - pioneering work in music composition in the 1940’s– Cleveland Museum of Art

• Moorehead and Pond (1978)– Qualitative study of children’s music exploration

• Vaughan (1971), Gorder (1976), Webster (1977)– Empirically grounded attempts to measure musical

creativity and creative thinking through music

Hickey (2002)

• General creativity– U-shaped developmental curve

• Early childhood: high; middle years: slump; adulthood: may emerge in more sophisticated form

– May be due to environmental rather than ‘cognitive’ trends

– Visual art - Gardner & Winner

• Childhood creativity may or may not predict adult creativity

Hickey (2002)

• Swanwick & Tillman (1986)– Cognitive development model

• Early mastery (0-4), imitation (4-9), imaginative play (10-15), metacognition (15+)

• General move from an unusual/personal style to idiomatic creations

• But no data for children older than 11

• Davies (1992) and Marsh (1995)– Children able to create complete and imaginative

songs very early (e.g., by 5 yrs.)

Hickey (2002)

• Kratus (1989)– Systematic analysis of children’s compositions

• Exploration - unlike anything played earlier• Development - similar (not identical) to music played

earlier• Repetition - the same as played earlier• Silence

– More varied strategy use in older children– More process-oriented thinking in younger children– More product-oriented thinking in older children

Hickey (2002)

• Assessment– Torrance TTCT dominated research

• General creativity

– Webster’s Measurement of Creative Thinking in Music-II (1994)

• Parallel measurement approach in music

– Both based on Guilford factors from much earlier• Criticism - that while construct validity has been

demonstrated, criterion validity is rare

Hickey (2002)

• Webster’s Measure of Creative Thinking in Music– Fluency, Flexibility, Originality, Syntax– Musical tasks: sponge ball on piano, pitched

temple blocks, mic and amplifier– 10 tasks in all, divided into - exploration,

application, synthesis

• McPherson (1993)– Instrumental improvisation creativity rating scales

• Fluency, musical syntax, creativity, musical quality

Hickey (2002)

• Amabile (1996)– Consensual Assessment Technique

• Subjective assessments of products by experts in the particular domain

• Used by several researchers in music– Tends to yield reliable scores among independent

judges

• Hickey (2000)– Most reliable judges of children’s compositions - their

general music teachers (not composers, theorists, other children, or instrumental teachers)

Hickey (2002)

• Cognitive processes underlying creative thinking in music– Webster model (1987)– Dunn (1997) - listening– Hickey (1995) - low and high creative

groups processes with MIDI composition• High - more ideas, more exploration, whole

composition appeared at some point

– Daignault (1997) - similar to Hickey above

Hickey (2002)

• Creativity and aptitude– Generally no relationship– Supports construct validity

• Creativity and achievement– Results more mixed - depends on how

‘divergent’ the creativity measure truly is…

• Open-ended response and intrinsic motivation are optimal for creativity

Hickey (2002)

• Arts experiences and general creativity– Mixed results - some studies show that

students with arts experiences score higher on creativity measuresHowever experimental studies that take ‘creative’ teaching approaches tend to increase scores on creativity measures

Hickey (2002)

• Confluence approaches to creativity– Amabile, Csikszentmihalyi, Gardner,

Sternberg– Moving beyond a solely cognitive and/or

psychometric approach and including other socio-cultural factors

Hee Kim (2006)

• Creativity Testing– A psychometric approach– Traces lineage of Guilford to Torrance– In depth review of Torrance’s measures

• Reliability, validity, and normative info

– Critique of limitations– Future directions for improvements

Sternberg (2006)

• A confluence approach to creativity• The investment theory

– Put in the least, get out the most– Need a combination of six personal resources

• Intellectual ability• Knowledge• Thinking style• Personality• Motivation• Environment

– More than a sum– May be thresholds or interactions

Sternberg (2006)

• Decision making important to consider• Alternative assessment approaches (when

compared with Guilford approach)• Ideas for instruction to encourage creativity• Types

– Accept paradigms and attempt to extend• Replication, redefinition, forward incrementation, advance

forward incrementation

– Rejects paradigms and attempt to replace• Redirection, reconstruction, reinitiation

– Synthesize paradigms• Integration