Behavioral markers of creative abilities in preschool children performing tasks on interactive digital equipment

Abstract

The article focuses on researching and encouraging creativity in pre-school children in the context of education digitalization. The used the software The Interactive Floor Magium to develop a game (The Treasure Map) aimed at measuring creativity in individual and joint activities. The stages of joint activity in the game involved interaction in pairs. The children’s task was to create a map of the area from the proposed set of ‘cards’ within a certain time (10 min. for each stage). The software recorded a number of quantitative parameters in the process of individual and joint activities — e.g., the number of filled cells on the playing field, the number of unique game cards, etc. The software relied on the recognition of movements and geometric shapes through artificial intelligence when processing the performance of the game task (constructing the ‘map’) and calculating the quantitative parameters of a child’s game activity. Creativity was measured by The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (P. Torrance). The results obtained using the test were compared with the quantitative parameters of children’s activity in The Treasure Map game using the r-Spearman correlation coefficient. The study involved 47 children aged 6–7 years from a kindergarten pre-school group. The study showed a correlation between creativity indicators according to the Torrance test: fluency, flexibility and originality (r from 0.43 at p<0.05 to 0.62 at p<0.01). Accordingly, these indicators were found to be correlated s with a partially identical set of behavioral manifestations recorded during The Treasure Map game. At the stage of individual activity, the study identified correlations between the indicators of creativity (fluency, flexibility and originality) and the indicators of gaming productivity (the number of game cards used by the child, the number of filled cells on the playing field). In addition, fluency and originality were found to be correlated with manifestations characterizing the quality of the game task performance (the number of correctly connected game cards). Originality according to the Torrance test correlates with the percentage of unique cards that the child used during the game. There were no significant correlations between the indicators of elaboration, abstractness of the name and resistance to closure of the Torrance test and the quantitative indicators of The Treasure Map game. The assumes that the game may be used to measure creative abilities.