Abstract
The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between “divergent thinking” and “intelligence” in childhood.
The subjects were 473 children of 2nd, 4th and 6th graders in the elementary school. Divergent thinking test (DTT) and intelligence test (IT) were administered. DTT included the following sub-tests: sketching circles (SC), pattern meanings (PM), alternate uses (AU) and restrictive association (RA). The index for scoring in DTT was fluency. IT included seven sub-tests from which the following four scores were calculated: thinking (T), memory (M), verbal ability (V) and non-verbal ability (P).
The centroid method of factor analysis and orthogonal rotation of axes was applied to the correlation matrix based on the above eight variables.(SC, PM, AU, RA, T, M, V, P), and three factors. were extracted. Factor I was interpreted as “intelligence” factor, factor II as “verbal-non verbal” factor and factor III as “divergent thinking” factor.
These results show that there are no structual differences between the three grades as far as the factor I and factor III are concerned, and the factor “divergent thinking” is independent of the factor “intelligence” in factorical analysis. In additional examination of factor II, however, the divergent thinking factor was related to intelligence factors T, V in 2nd and 4th grades but to intelligence factors M, P in 6th grade.
