Effect of expected rewards on children's creativity

This study examined the effect of expected rewards on children's creativity . Sixty-one female gymnasts (ages 4-17) were randomly assigned to a no-rewa rd or expected reward condition. All participants completed both a training task that required divergent thinking (generating themes for a gymnastics gala) and a transfer task (using circles to make pictures). The reward cont ingency was in effect only during the training task. Creativity was assesse d by (a) consensual judgment of 5 raters and (6) determining the statistica l rarity of a given response for this sample of participants. Results indic ated that rewards lead younger children to generate less appropriate themes on the training task and children of all ages to draw somewhat less creati ve pictures on the transfer task It was also found that the consensual judg ment measure of creativity was more sensitive to the age of children than w as the rarity measure.