Emotion in children's play and creative problem solving

Theoretically, pretend play facilitates cognitive and affective processes i mportant in creativity. Expression of affect states and affect-laden fantas y are affective processes common to both play and creativity. This study in vestigated the effect of instructing children to engage in happy or angry p lay on affect in play and on divergent thinking. Eighty 1st- and 2nd-grade children were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 groups. It was hypothesized that children in the happy and angry puppet play groups would have more affect i n their play and that their mood would be congruent with the play instructi on. It was also hypothesized that children in the happy and angry groups wo uld have higher divergent thinking scores than children in the free-play an d puzzle conditions. One major finding was that children in the angry play, group had more expression of negative affect in their play and more self-r eported negative mood than children in the other groups. There were no diff erences among the experimental groups in divergent thinking. However, self- reported mood during the play and puzzle tasks was significantly associated with originality of the divergent thinking responses. Children who experie nced more affect as opposed to feeling neutral gave more original responses . The major conclusion of the study is that the play paradigm can be used t o study affective processes in children.