Reward and Ideational Fluency in Preschool Children

Examined were the effects of material rewards on the ideational fluency of 75 preschool children attending a university laboratory and three private child care centers in Texas. Subjects were assigned to reward or nonreward conditions and administered two ideational fluency tasks: an Unusual Uses task requiring subjects to name all the uses they could think of for a box and for paper, and a Pattern Meanings task asking subjects to name all the things that two three-dimensional objects could represent. Prior to the administration of the tasks, children in the reward condition were told they could select a prize of either bubbles or crayons. All responses were coded as either original or popular. Total fluency was computed by adding the number of popular and original responses. Flexibility scores were derived from protocols for the picture completion subtest of the 1974 Torrance Test of Creative Thinking, Figural Form A. Analyses revealed a significant main effect for reward on the ideational fluency components of originality, total fluency, and flexibility. In all cases the rewarded subjects scored lower than the nonrewarded subjects. Findings support the growing body of evidence that rewards are detrimental to creative functioning. A three-page reference list concludes the document. (RH)