Relationships Among Private Speech and Creativity Measurements of Young Children

The purpose of this study was to examine relationships among thought processes represented in young children's private speech and creativity assessments of the same children. A secondary purpose was to study the role of affective private speech and its association with creativity measures. The sample was 42 preschool and kindergarten children on whom creativity measures were obtained using the Torrance Thinking Creatively in Action and Movement (TCAM) assessment instrument. Private speech was collected from the same children. Each private speech utterance was coded into one of five levels: (a) task irrelevant speech (T-1); (b) nonfacilitative, task relevant speech (T-2); (c) task relevant speech (T-3); (d) coping/reinforcing speech (T-4); and (e) solving speech (T-5). Statistical analysis revealed significant positive relationships among creativity measures, solving speech, and coping/reinforcing speech. Furthermore, coping and reinforcing private speech were consistently linked with high creativity measures, demonstrating that the affective domain may play a critical role in creative thinking.