Creative Thinking During Childhood

Imagination and Fantasy

In the estimation of both experts and lay people, imagination and fantasy are the great creative assets of early childhood. It is common to say that children have “active imaginations,” meaning that the boundaries between reality and fantasy are not as clearly demarcated for children as they are for adults, and imaginative thought comes as readily to the child as literal thought comes to the adult. In fact, experts on creativity have long believed that, for most human beings, imagination peaks during early childhood.

What, exactly, is imagination and why might it be more active early in life? Imagination is defined as the ability to form rich and varied mental images or concepts of people, places, things, and situations that are not present. Kindergartner Mallory has become intrigued by flowers—not just ordinary flowers, but flowers that exist only in her mind’s eye. As she imagines what she calls “an acrobatic flower” and “a flower with pineapple teeth,” Mallory uses both objective thought (what she knows) and intuitive thought (what she feels). In addition, Mallory considers how to communicate her thoughts and feelings to others. Imagination is an “as if” situation (Weininger, 1988, p. 142). Mallory has seen pineapple chunks before; now she draws “as if” they were in the flower’s mouth as teeth. She has seen acrobats on television; now she draws her flower “as if” it had the physical skills of an acrobat. By examining how Mallory has combined apparently unrelated elements in her drawings to produce surprising new forms, we can glimpse her imagination at work.

Fantasy is a subset of imaginative thinking. Fantasy occurs when a person uses the imagination to create particularly vivid mental images or concepts that are make-believe, impossible, or at least not yet possible. Fantasy is a “what if” situation (Weininger, 1988, p. 144). Here is how one mother described her son’s use of fantasy as he created a pretend companion:

My son, who just turned 4, became fascinated by deer. This happened, I think, because while we were visiting friends out in the country, a doe and her fawn came into the yard. Now Scott has created a pretend friend named “Fawnbelly.” His bedroom window faces the front porch, and that, according to my son, is where she sleeps. He feeds her by putting a plastic apple on the windowsill and, in return, she protects him at night. When he talks about Fawnbelly, I can picture this gentle, expectant doe with huge brown eyes keeping watch over our house.

This mother obviously values the vivid imagination and rich fantasy life of her child, and rightly so. Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner (1993a) has described how children are freer in their thinking: “The child is not bothered by inconsistencies, departures from convention, nonliteralness . . . which often results in unusual and appealing juxtapositions and associations” (p. 228). In fact, many adult artists report that they must struggle to get back in touch with those feelings and attitudes of early childhood in order to realize their creative potential. This nonliteral mode of thinking, so prevalent during early childhood, balances and complements literal thinking. As the next section describes, great ideas are produced by applying different modes of thought to a task or problem at various times.

Modes of Thinking

Types of thinking may be broadly categorized as convergent or divergent. The creative process relies on both types in different measures at different times. Take, for instance, the invention of the Post-it note. When 3M employees invented a temporary adhesive, their colleagues—who had devoted their careers to striving for more permanent adhesives—simply could not wrap their minds around a use for it. Still, they approved the team to create some prototypes of the sticky notes and distribute them to the secretaries in the company. It was not until the secretaries were clamoring for more that the value of this item became apparent (Peters & Waterman, 1988). This illustrates the two modes of thinking—convergent (“dig the same hole deeper” and look for more permanent adhesives) and divergent (“dig in another place” and seek a use for a temporary adhesive) (DeBono, 1971).

Creative thought relies on both types of thought, employing them as the situation warrants, and orchestrating them appropriately. The blending of convergent and divergent thought is necessary for problem solving (De Bono, 1992).