This is one of the important aspects related closely with intelligence and future success that deserves special mention. Most of the really fine artistic and scientific work is done by a relatively few. Only a handful of people in any generation break through the usual modes and forms and come up with radically new ideas. They borrow heavily from others, but push things forward as well, stimulate our thinking, re-organize existing ideas, and mark out new directions
All creative people are talented, but not all talented people are creative. Creativity is one of the most difficult and least understood areas. In the past, creativity and giftedness were not seen as different. People expected all talented children to be creative, and at the same time, dismissed as unintelligent those whose talents were solely in the field of the arts.
Binet, famous for his IQ test, noted that some children responded to some of the questions in his test in an unusual or unexpected way, but did not score well overall. These children were classified as being of lesser intelligence. Although Binet's discovery was made around the time of World War I, it was not until the 1950s that creativity as a separate entity was given any serious consideration by researchers. There is one problem which has not been solved - creativity is difficult or maybe impossible to define.
None the less, in the 1960s and 1970s various tests were devised to try and measure creativity. The best known were developed by Torrance, Wallach and Kogan, and Getzels and Jackson. These and others have all fallen into disrepute. No agreement was ever reached about methods of measuring, or what 'original', 'novel', 'unusual', or 'worthwhile' thinking might be. In addition, could children really be expected to think creatively and spontaneously in the stress of tests? The test did not cover the process side of creativity in, say, creative problem solving : formulation of the problem, incubation, insight and evaluation.
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