The genesis and development of creative activity

During the sixties many studies of creativity focussed upon the evaluation of outcomes or products and gave little serious attention to the study of the genesis and development of the cognitive abilities responsible for the products. As a result, creativity assessment was delayed until the child had developed the verbal and other expressive abilities necessary for product-orientated assessment and creativity was deprived of an adequate developmental theory.

This paper offers an explanation of creativity within a developmental constructivist framework. The focus is upon the nature of creative activity and not upon the evaluation of products. There is an attempt to demonstrate that creative activity may be observed from early infancy and that this early transformational activity increases in structural and contextual complexity as the individual develops.