Effect of sex, intelligence, and style of thinking on creativity: A comparison of gifted and average IQ children.

15 boys and 15 girls, aged 9–11 yrs, from a gifted program (IQs of 130 or more on the Otis Lennon Test of Mental Abilities) and 30 age- and sex-matched average children (IQs between 95 and 110) were compared on Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking and left hemisphere, right hemisphere, and integrated thinking styles. Results show that sex, IQ, and thinking style each had an effect on different dimensions of Ss' creativity. Girls, irrespective of their IQ level and thinking style, scored higher than boys consistently across the 7 creativity subscales, reaching significance in verbal and figural fluency. Gifted Ss, independent of their thinking style, were better than the nongifted Ss but only in verbal originality. The integrated thinking style was related to creativity on the Elaboration and Figural Flexibility subtests. Results support the relative independence of select facets of children's creativity from general intellectual factors; they also suggest that performance on each of the creativity subtests may be strongly influenced by different psychological, intellectual, and perhaps, social factors. (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)