Creativity and Video Game Playing

Videogame playing and creativity: Findings from the Children and Technology Project Linda A. Jackson1 Edward A. Witt1 & Ivan Alexander Games1 [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] 1 Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824 USA Abstract This research examined relationships between children’s information technology (IT) use and their creativity. IT use was operationalized as computer use, Internet use, videogame playing and cell phone use. A multidimensional measure of creativity was developed based on Torrance’s (1987, 1995) test of creative thinking. Participants were 491 12-year olds; 53% were female, 34% were African American and 66% were Caucasian American. Results indicated that videogame playing was the sole and strong predictor of all measures of creativity. Regardless of gender or race, greater videogame playing was associated with greater creativity. Type of videogame (e.g., violent, interpersonal) was unrelated to creativity. Gender but not race differences were obtained in the amount and type of videogame playing, but not in creativity. Implications of the findings for future research, the development of creativity and videogames for children, and gender differences in videogame playing are discussed. Keywords: videogames, creativity, children, technology use Introduction Creativity may be defined as a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations between existing ideas or concepts. From a scientific standpoint the products of creative thought (sometimes referred to as divergent thought) are usually considered to have both originality and appropriateness. An alternative, more everyday conception of creativity is that it is simply the act of making something new (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity). Although creativity appears to be a simple concept in the parlance of everyday life, it has eluded the scientific community for decades because it is in fact a complex and difficult concept to define and measure (Cooper, 1991; Domino, 1994; Fleenor & Taylor, 1994; Hennessey & Amabile, 1988; Khatena, 1989; Meusburger, 2009). Over one hundred definitions of creativity exist in the literature spanning a variety of disciplines (Hocevar & Bachelor, 1989; Park & Byrnes, 1983; Parkhurst, 1999), including psychology (cognitive, social), history, economics, business and philosophy (Amabile, 1983; Amabile, et al., 2005; Csikszentmihalyi, 2009; Sternberg, 2001). Creativity is unique among scientific phenomena insofar as there is no single, authoritative perspective or definition of creativity. It is unique in psychology insofar as there is no standardized measure of creativity. The presumed causes of creativity are as varied as its definitions and measurements (Hocevar & Bachelor, 1989; Plucker & Runco, 1998; Puccio & Cabra, 2009; Runco & Albert, 2010). Creativity has been attributed to divine intervention, cognitive processes, social environment, personality traits and chance. It has been associated with mental dysfunction, genius and even humor. Some argue that it is a genetically-based trait while others argue for

the importance of the environment in producing creativity, particularly as evidenced in inventions and innovations in mathematics, engineering and the sciences. Industries have developed around the concept of creativity despite or perhaps because of its ambiguity and multi-dimensional nature (Isaksen, et al., 2010; Meuseburger, 2009). Perhaps the most widespread definition of creativity is that it results in the production of a creative work that is both original and useful. Other popular definitions of creativity focus on an activity that results in producing or bringing about something that is partly or wholly new, investing an existing object with new properties or characteristics, imagining new possibilities that were not conceived of before, and seeing or performing something in a manner different from what was previously thought possible or normal. A useful distinction has been made between the creative person, the creative product, the creative process and the creative environment. Each of these factors is usually present in what is labeled creative (Rhodes, 1961; Runco & Albert, 2010). Some scholars have suggested that creative activity exhibits several dimensions including sensitivity to problems on the part of the creative agent, originality, ingenuity, unusualness, usefulness, and appropriateness of the creative product as well as intellectual leadership on the part of the creative agent (Cooper, 1991; King & Pope, 1999). Given the diversity in conceptualizations of creativity it is no surprise that a similar diversity exists in its measurement. In an article titled “Can creativity be measured?” Ferry (2003) provides an overview of measures of creativity and concludes that although creativity is complex it can be measured. The choice of measure, however, depends on which aspect of creativity is of interest to the researcher (Isaksen, et. al., 2010; Parkhurst, 1999; Puccio & Gonzales, 2004; Puccio & Murdock, 1999). Research has begun to examine how the creative process may be understood and enhanced by new technologies. In a review of this literature Sternberg and Lubart (1999) identified a number of research domains that have addressed creativity in the information age. Groupware and other Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) platforms have made obvious the need for a more connective, cooperative and collective view of creativity rather than the prevailing individualistic view. Creativity research on global virtual teams has been helpful in identifying how the creative process is affected by cultural, cognitive factors and anonymous interactions. All share the perspective that modern technologies have the potential to affect creativity, depending on how it is defined and measured. A popular approach to the measurement of creativity is the psychometric approach, pioneered by Gilford (1967). Most creativity measures in use today are based at least partially on Guilford’s theory of creativity which posits that the ability to envision multiple solutions to a problem lies at the core of creativity (Guilford, 1967, 1982). He called this process divergent thinking and its opposite--the tendency to narrow all options to a single solution- convergent thinking. Guilford identified three components of divergent thinking important to understanding and measuring creativity: (1) fluency- the ability to quickly find multiple solutions to a problem; (2) flexibility- being able to simultaneously consider a variety of alternatives; and (3) originality- referring to ideas that differ from those of other people. Creativity researchers have noted that measures of creativity are designed to tap mental abilities in ways that are different from--and sometimes diametrically opposed to conventional measures of intelligence. Thus, persons with the highest scores on creativity tests do not necessarily have the highest IQ scores. Rather, creative people tend to have IQs that are at

least average or above average. But beyond an IQ score of 120, there is no relationship between performance on intelligence tests and performance on tests of creativity (Puccio, et al., 2010; Sternberg, 1988, 2001; Torrance, 1987, 1988, 1995). The Torrance Test of Creativity (Torrance, 1987) is based on Guilford’s theory and is one of the most reliable and valid measures of children’s creativity. Torrance’s test is used in the present research to provide a multidimensional measure of 12-year old participants’ creativity. Responses to simple but somewhat ambiguous stimuli (e.g., an egg, an elf peering at its reflection in a small pond) are used to test divergent thinking and other problem-solving skills. Responses are initially scored on three dimensions similar to those identified in Guilford’s theory, just discussed. They are: (1) fluency- the total number of interpretable, meaningful, and relevant ideas generated in response to the stimulus; (2) originality- the statistical rarity of responses among the test subjects; and (3) elaboration- the amount of detail in the responses. These dimensions were evaluated empirically in the present research to evaluate their appropriateness for measuring creativity in our sample of 12-year old participants. Given the absence of research or theory on the relationship between technology use and children’s creativity no specific hypotheses were formulated. Instead we explored relationship for four types of technology use; computer use, Internet use, videogame playing and cell phone use. Given recent evidence that computer and Internet use may enhance academic performance (Jackson, et al., 2006; Jackson, et al., 2010), it may be that the use of these two technologies contributes to creativity. The frequently observed negative relationship between videogame playing and grades in school (Walsh, et al., 2006) suggests that videogame playing may undermine creativity. Because the effects of cell phone use on child outcomes have never been examined, there was no basis for expecting a relationship between cell phone use and creativity. Methods Participants and Procedures Participants were 491 children, average age 12.34 years old, who completed surveys containing the creativity measures as part of their participation in the Children and Technology Project (NSF-HSD#0527064). Surveys were mailed to participants’ parents and returned in stamped, pre-addressed envelopes. Participants’ parents also completed surveys and were compensated $25 when both the completed Parent Survey and Child Survey were returned. Parents were also eligible to participant in a raffle for a grand prize drawing of $500. Response rate was 65%. Child participants and their parents were recruited from 20 middle schools geographically distributed in the southern lower peninsula of Michigan. An additional 100 participants were recruited from YouthVille Detroit, and after-school center for underserved groups in Detroit, MI. Measures Creativity: The Torrance Test of Creativity- Figural (Torrance, 1987) was the basis for constructing a multidimensional measure of creativity with two objectives in mind. The first was to capture the richness and complexity of the creativity construct. The second was to minimize the contribution of alternative constructs to the creativity measure. In particular, creativity measures have been criticized for being highly saturated with the generalized intelligence factor, “little g” (e.g., Cooper, 1991; Fleenor & Taylor, 1994; Hocevar &

Bachelor, 1989; Sternberg, 2001; Torrance, 1988, 1995; Treffinger, 1985). Every effort was made to minimize the contribution of little g to our measures of creativity while acknowledging that any measure requiring a verbal/written response will to some extent be influenced by generalized intelligence. Participants responded to two target stimuli to assess creativity. The first stimulus took the form of an “egg” presented alone on a blank sheet of paper. Instructions were as follows: On the following page is a curved shape. Think of a picture or object that you can draw with this shape as a part of it. Try to think of a picture that no one else will think of. Keep adding new ideas to your first idea to make it tell as interesting and exciting a story as you can. When you have completed your picture make up a name or title for it and write this in the space provided under your picture. After you have drawn your picture and given it a title, come back to this page and write a story about your picture in the space below. The second stimulus was a picture of an elf-like figure lying in front of a small pool of water, staring at its reflection in the water. Instructions were as follows: Look at the picture. Think about what is happening. What can you tell is happening for sure? What do you need to know to understand what is happening, what caused it to happen, and what will happen next, as a result? After you have looked at the picture and thought about these questions then go to the next page, after the picture. The next 3 pages contained the following instructions: Write out all of the QUESTIONS you can think of about the picture. Ask all the questions you need to ask to know for sure what is happening. Do not ask questions that can be answered just by looking at the picture. You can look back at the picture as much as you want to. List as many possible CAUSES as you can think of for the activity (what is happening) in the picture. You may use things that might have happened just before the things that are happening in the picture, or you can use things that happened a long time ago that made the things in the picture happen. Make as many guesses as you like. Don’t be afraid to guess. You can look back at the picture as much as you want to. List as many POSSIBILITIES as you can think of for what might happen next as a result of what is happening in the picture. You may use things that might happen right afterward, or you can use things that might happen long afterward, in the future. Make as many guesses as you can. Don’t be afraid to guess. You can look back at the picture as much as you want to.

Technology use. In a separate section of the Child Survey participants indicated the extent of their technology use on a 7-point scale where 1 = not at all, 2 = about once a month, 3 = a few times a month, 4 = a few times a week, 5 = everyday, but for less than 1 hour, 6 = everyday, for 1 to 3 hours, and 7 = everyday, for more than 3 hours. Measures were obtained for computer use, Internet use, videogame playing and cell phone use. Participants were also asked to indicate their favorite videogame in the blank space provided. Socio-demographic characteristics. In the first section of the Child Survey participants indicated their gender, race/ethnicity and age. Only those participants who indicated that their race/ethnicity was African American or Caucasian American are included in the analyses that follow (i.e., 491 of the 591 child participants). Information about household income was obtained from the Parent Survey. Parents indicated their total net annual household income using the following scale: 1 = Under $20,000, 2 = $20,000 to $49,999, 3 = $50,000 to $79,999, 4 = $80,000 to $99,000, 5 = $100,000 to $149,999, 6 = $150,000 to $200,000, 7 = over $200,000. Results Preliminary analyses. Children’s open-ended responses to the creativity stimuli (Egg and Elf) were coded by six trained undergraduates supervised by a trained graduate student. Coding was based on the following categories and scales suggested by Torrence (1987, 1988): Egg story creativity: Overall creativity (1 = not at all creative, 2 = creative, 3 = very creative); Fluency - number of interpretable, meaningful, and relevant ideas generated in response to the stimulus; Flexibility- number of different categories of relevant responses; Originality - rarity or unusualness of responses (1 = not unusual or rare, 2 = unusual and rare, 3 = very unusual and very rare); Elaboration - the degree of detail in the responses (1 = low elaboration, 2 = moderate elaboration, 3 = high elaboration); Mean Number of Words in the story. Elf story questions creativity: Overall creativity, fluency, flexibility, originality, elaboration of questions, as operationalized for the Egg Story, above; Number of questions (non-redundant). Elf story causes creativity: Overall creativity, fluency, flexibility, originality, elaboration of causes, as operationalized for the Egg Story, above; Number of causes (non-redundant). Elf story possibilities creativity: Overall creativity, fluency, flexibility, originality, elaboration of possibilities, as operationalized for the Egg Story, above; Number of possibilities (nonredundant). Composites for each of the measures listed above were formed by averaging the ratings of the 6 trained undergraduate raters. Factor analyses (exploratory, varimax rotation) were used to identify underlying dimensions of the creativity ratings only (i.e., not including the number counts, which used a different scale of measurement (1 to unlimited) than the creativity ratings (all of which were on a 1 to 3 scale). Results of the factor analyses suggested 4 underlying though related dimensions (eigenvalues > 1). Items for these dimensions were averaged to form the following composite measures used in subsequent analyses: Egg story creativity – mean (egg originality, egg elaboration, egg creativity), α = .94; Elf questions creativity- mean (questions originality, questions elaboration, questions creativity), α = .88; Elf causes creativity- mean (causes originality, causes elaboration, causes creativity), α = .93;

Elf possibilities creativity- mean (possibilities originality, possibilities elaboration, possibilities creativity), α = .94. Also included in subsequent analyses were the average number of words in the egg story (# EggWords) and the average number of questions, causes, and possibilities in responses to the elf stimulus (#QCPElf). Open-ended response to the request for the name of their favorite videogame resulted in 205 unique videogames from the 491 children. To determine whether only specific types of videogames were related to creativity we categorized each of the 205 videogames as follows: First, we determined whether categorizing games according to videogame genre would result in mutually exclusive and meaningful categories with which to examine the effects of videogame type on creativity. In genre categorization game play interaction, rather than visual or narrative differences, are the basis for categorization (Apperly, 2006). The most popular videogame genres are: (1) Action videogames. Games in this category include fighting games and first-person shooter games. Action games present game mechanics (core player activities) that require players to use quick reflexes, accuracy, and timing to overcome obstacles, most commonly, foes in combat. Examples of action videogames are Double Dragon and Street Fighter. (2) Adventure videogames. Often associated with action games (which are often actionadventure games), adventure games extend the action game genre in that their mechanics situate player actions in the context of sequential puzzle solving, commonly associated with a linear storyline. Solving these puzzles often requires going beyond the action mechanic and involves interacting with people or the environment, most often in a non-confrontational way. During the decades of the 80’s and 90’s, interactive adventures produced by Lucasarts, such as the Secret of Monkey Island Series, and the Indiana Jones series established commercial success in this area. One of the best known titles for adventure games is the game Myst. More recent titles in this area are Fahrenheit, and Indigo Prophecy. Tomb Raider and Uncharted 2 are also among the popular action games, although both are better categorized as a hybrid of action and adventure videogames. (3) Role-playing videogames. Role playing games typically cast players as adventurers whose skills are needed for progression through one or more possible storylines that are chosen by players through their decisions during play. Many involve story worlds where players are presented with quests they can choose to complete in exchange for rewards. Completing these quests commonly implies defeating adversaries (e.g., monsters) that block access to rewards and higher levels of game play. During the last decade this genre has become one of the most popular ones among gamers, with the appearance of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing games such as World of Warcraft, which allow millions of players to both compete and collaborate in completing quests. Other examples of role-playing videogames are Dungeons and Dragons, Final Fantasy, and Fallout. (4) Simulation videogames. Simulation games are a diverse category of games designed to simulate aspects of a real or fictional reality. Subcategories of simulation games are construction and management simulation, life simulation, social simulation, and historical simulation. In these games, play mechanics commonly involve manipulating the variables of a system to produce a desired outcome, whether by building a new system (as in Sim City), or modifying an existing one. Examples of videogames in these 3 subcategories are SimCity, Jurassic Park, and Civilization (respectively).

(5) Strategy videogames. This is a broad category of games distinguished by the amount of thinking and planning involved in a reaching goal (e.g., victory). In most strategy videogames the player has a godlike view of the universe and ultimate control over it. Strategy videogames generally take one of four forms, depending on whether the game is turn-based or real-time and whether the game's focus is strategy or military tactics. Examples of videogames in this category are Starcraft, Command and Control, Cash Bandicott and Dark Cloud. (6) Vehicle simulation games. Games in this category attempt to provide the player with a realistic interpretation of operating various kinds of vehicles. Good examples are flight simulation games (such as Microsoft’s Flight Simulator) and racing games such as Need for Speed and Burnout. (7) Other genre. Music, programming, party, puzzle, sports and trivia are game genres placed in this category. Members of the gaming community argue that these categories of videogames are not mutually exclusive and, like genres in other media, it is common to find examples that fall within more than one category. Categorization schemes are continually evolving and categorization based on multiple genres often provides a better description of a videogame than categorization based on only one genre (Adams & Rollings, 2006; Salen and Zimmerman, 2003). Next, using game descriptions provided by Wikipedia for 200 of the 205 videogames listed as a favorite game, an effort was made to categorize games into one of the 7 genres just described. This effort proved unsuccessful. Most of the videogames required at least 2 genres to describe its game play. More importantly, an alternative categorization scheme might better capture the dimensions of children’s game play that may be related to child outcomes, including creativity. For example, the amount of aggressive play, the degree to which a wellthought strategy is involved in game play, and whether a game has an interpersonal focus are more important to understanding the psychological impact of videogame play than are the genre categorizations just discussed. Thus, children’s favorite videogame was placed into one of the following mutually exclusive categories: (1) Violent videogames. Games in this category include first-person shooter games and games in which violence is at the core of game play. Games named by participants that fell in this category are Zelda and Super Smash Brothers. (2) Action-adventure videogames. Games in this category typically involve role-playing, strategy and problem-solving to “win” the game. Examples of games in this category for our participants are Half-Life 2 and Star Wars. (3) Racing/driving videogames. Driving and race simulation games fall into this category. Examples are Need for Speed and Big Mutha Truckers II. (4) Sports videogames. Games in this category include all types of sports/athletic games. Among our participants the most popular games in this category are NBA basketball and NFL football. (5) Interpersonal videogames. Games that involve interpersonal relationships or caring for others, humans or nonhumans, are included in the category. Examples from our participants list of favorites are Sims and Animal Crossing. (6) Other videogames. Games that did not fit into any or the preceding 5 categories were placed in this category. Examples are Parkalline and Spider Solitaire Relationship between creativity and technology use.

Correlations between the 6 measures of creativity and 4 measures of children’s technology use are presented in Table 1. To minimize the likelihood of Type 1 errors a significance level of .01 was adopted. Even with this more stringent criterion (than p < .05), correlations between videogame playing and every measure of creativity were highly significant and positive. Children who played videogames more scored higher on Egg story creativity, Elf questions creativity, Elf causes creativity, Elf possibilities creativity, # Egg words and # QCP Elf words. No other technology use measure was related to creativity. Specifically, computer use, Internet use and cell phone use were unrelated to any measure of creativity. As expected, creativity measures were related to each other. And computer use was related to Internet use and videogame playing. Cell phone use was related only to Internet use. Insert Table 1 about here. Next we examined the correlations between creativity and socio-demographic characteristics to determine whether correlations between videogame playing and creativity might be attributable to correlations between these measures and participants’ gender, race/ethnicity, age or family household income. Gender was unrelated to any measure of creativity. Race was related to income (r = .33), and modestly related (p < .05) to only one measure of creativity, Elf questions creativity (r = .14). Interestingly, income was also related to Elf questions creativity (r = .20. p < .01), suggesting that the relationship between race and this measure may be mediated by the relationship between race and income, a possibility we examined in the regression analyses reported next. No other relationships were significant. Predicting creativity from technology use Hierarchical regression analyses were used to predict each measure of creativity from technology use. Race and income were controlled (i.e., entered in Step 1) only for the creativity measure that showed relationships with these two socio-demographic characteristics (i.e., Elf questions creativity). Results are presented in Table 2. Insert Table 2 about here. Videogame playing was the sole predictor of Egg story creativity, Elf causes creativity, Elf possibilities creativity, # words egg story, # QCP elf. Videogame playing continued to predict Elf questions creativity even after the effects of income on this measure were controlled (std β = 22, p < .01). Moreover, the race effect on this measure was reduced to non-significance when income was controlled (.10, ns). To strengthen the inference that videogame playing is a unique predictor of creativity, regression analyses were used to examine the predictive ability of the four socio-demographic characteristics for each measure of creativity. None of the regression equations was significant at the more stringent level of .01. Thus, gender, race/ethnicity, age and family household income did not predict the creativity of 12 year-old participants, regardless of how creativity was measured. Family household income did predict creativity but only for the Egg story (std β = .12) and questions about the Elf story (std β = .15), and only at the conventional level of significance (p < .05). Creativity and videogame type. Correlations between creativity and each type of the 6 types of videogames are presented in Table 3. Insert Table 3 about here. All types of videogames were strongly related to all measures of creativity except Racing/Driving games, which were related only to Elf possibilities creativity and to number of

words in Egg story. Thus, regardless of the type of videogame children played, more play was associated with greater creativity. Also examined were gender and race differences in type of favorite videogame. The gender effect was significant, χ2(5) = 75.96, p < .001, but the race effect was not, χ2(5) = 8.56, p < .128. Insert Table 4 about here. Inspection of the frequencies in Table 4 indicates that males were more likely than females to play violent videogames and sports videogames whereas females were more likely than males to play interpersonal games or games that did not fit into any of the videogame categories. Males and females were equally likely to play strategy videogames and racing/driving videogames. Also evident from Table 4 is that racing/driving videogames were the least popular games in this sample of 12-year old children. Discussion Using a sample of almost 500 12 year-old children who were either African American or Caucasian American, we found that videogame playing predicted multiple dimensions of creativity, regardless of the type of videogame played. Computer use, Internet use and cell phone use were unrelated to any measure of creativity. Despite the strong relationship between gender and videogame playing evidenced in this and previous research (Gentile, 2009; Jackson, 2008), with males playing far more than females, there was no relationship between gender and creativity. Nor was there a relationship between race and creativity. Decades of research have been devoted to developing an appropriate conceptualization of creativity and an appropriate instrument to measure it. In this research we used one of the most reliable and valid measures of creativity in children, the Torrance Test of Creativity (Torrance, 1962). In the tradition of Gilford (1982), Torrance (1987) operationalized creativity as consisting of both the number and nature of children’s descriptions of ambiguous stimuli, an “Egg” and an “Elf.” Reliable coding of children’s open-ended responses to these stimuli was possible, and resulted in the identification of multiple dimensions of creativity, every one of which was related to videogame playing and none of which was related to computer use, Internet use or cell phone use. Children who played videogames more were more creative than children who played them less, regardless of gender or race. In addition to the amount of videogame playing that children engaged in we also categorized their favorite videogame into 1 of 6 mutually exclusive categories. Gender, but not race, was related to which category of videogame was the child’s favorite. Males were more likely than females to indicate that violent videogames and sports videogames was their favorite. Females were more likely than males to indicate that games involving interaction with others (human or nonhuman), and games that could not be categorized was their favorite. There was no gender difference in preference for strategy videogames or racing/driving videogames. To the best of our knowledge this is the first empirical demonstration of a relationship between technology use and creativity. It raises a number of new questions for future research. First, are these results generalizable across a range of child ages, races, and family incomes? Does this relationship exist for adolescents and adults as well as for 12-year olds? Does this relationship transcend the boundaries of language and local culture? Would a different

categorization scheme for videogame types result in similar findings of no effect of game type on creativity? And, importantly, can we design videogames to further enhance creativity? In addition to testing the generalizability of our findings across respondent characteristics, there generalizability across diverse measures of creativity needs to be determined. We used the Torrance Test of Creativity in this research because of its established validity and reliability. However, there are other measures of creativity, some of which may be more suitable for different respondent characteristics than those of our sample (e.g., adult respondents). Will these alternative measures of creativity produce similar relationships to videogame playing as those used in the present research? Another important direction for future research suggested by our findings is to determine whether other forms and measures of technology use are also related to creativity, in particular, those that, like games, can involve the manipulation of complex systems. In this research we used quantitative and qualitative measures of videogame playing and found that the former but not the latter was related to creativity. Specifically, the amount of videogame playing, but not the type of videogame played, was related to all dimensions of creativity. In contrast, the amount of computer use, Internet use and cell phone use was unrelated to any dimension of creativity. Will other measures of technology use, such as time spent in social networking web sites or blogs, be related to creativity? Gender differences in videogame playing indicated that males played videogames more and preferred a different type of videogame than did females (e.g., Heeter, et al., 2008; Jackson, 2008; Lucas & Sherry, 2004). To the extent that videogame playing is causally related to creativity, which has yet to be demonstrated, then the fact that females are less likely to play videogames than are male may have implications for gender differences in creativity. Will females lesser game playing result is less creativity than males, as children enter adolescence and adulthood? Should additional efforts be made to attract females to videogames? Perhaps the most important and challenging direction for future research is to determine why videogame playing is related to creativity while other measures of technology use are not. What is it about videogame playing that may contribute to creativity? Is it the opportunity to experience vastly different visual environments that contributes to creativity? Is there something inherent in the hand-eye coordination required to play videogames that is responsible for its relationship to creativity? Or is the cognition stimulated by videogames responsible for this relationship? Although there is now a vast literature on videogaming (Adams & Rollings, 2007; Gee. 2005; Gentile, 2009; Lewis et al., 2007), none has addressed these relationships and none has established a causal connection between videogame playing and cognitive outcomes in children. Using adult samples Green and Bavelier (2007) have established a causal connection between videogame playing and visual-spatial skills. A relationship, but not a causal one, has recently been demonstrated in children (Jackson et al., 2010). Much work remains to be done on the effects of videogame playing on children’s development, beyond the established but still controversial adverse effects of videogame playing on social behavior (i.e., aggression; Anderson et al., 2007; Schmierbach, 2010; but cf. Gee, 2005; Schaffer, 2007). A direction for future research suggested by contemporary theories is to examine the extent to which “good” videogames encourage players to take designer perspectives. It is these perspectives that encourage the examination of problems from a complex systems and multidimensional perspective (Gee, 2005; Games, 2010).

Although there is a large literature on videogaming (Adams & Rollings, 2005; Gee. 2005; Lewis, McGuire & Fox, 2007) its impact on learning and sophisticated ways of thinking (i.e., computational thinking) has yet to be done.

Acknowledgements We thank the National Science Foundation for providing grant support for this project (NSFHSD # 0567064). Special thanks go to the Program Chair, Michael Gorman, for his continuing support. Project website: http://www.msu.edu/user/jackso67/CT/children/ Thanks also go to the six undergraduates who spent a summer coding the creativity data. They are Robert Sancrainte, Tehreem Nayyar, Nicole Ghersi, Kristen Ghersi, Amber Brooks and Jade Johnson.

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Table 1. Correlations between creativity and technology use. 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1-Egg story creativity

1

2-Elf questions creativity

.65*

1

3-Elf causes creativity

.52*

.72*

1

4-Elf possibilities creativity

.58*

.59*

.71*

1

5-# words egg story

.45*

.38*

.47*

.42*

1

6-# QCP elf stories

.35*

.44*

.49*

.33*

.55*

1

.12

.13

.06

.14

.15

.10

1

.02

.05

.00

.08

.10

.10

.66*

1

.59*

.40*

.44*

.49*

.47*

.27*

.20*

.04

1

-.12

-.06

-.10

-.09

-.09

-.11

.08

.13

-.06

7-How often do you use a computer? 8-How often do you use the Internet? 9-How often do you play videogames? 10-How often do you use a cell phone?

Note. Ns for the analyses ranged from 273 to391. * p