Sensory Approach to Creative Writing: A Study of the Effect of Increasing the Number of Types of Sensory Stimuli Intended to Motivate Children to Write Creatively

The Problem: The primary purpose of this investigation was to determine if increasing the number of types of sensory stimulation prior to a writing experience would help children to write more creatively and to write longer stories. The secondary purpose was to investigate the use of the combination of an intelligence test score plus three measures of creativity as a predictor of creative writing ability. The Procedure: The sample for this study consisted of randomly selected fourth, sixth, and eighth grade students (N = 300) of the Silver Bay area, a community of 4000 in \u27Northeastern Minnesota. These subjects were randomly assigned to five treatment groups in each of the three grades. Treatment Group One served as a control for the other four groups. Group One received aural stimulus only. Group Two received both aural and visual stimuli. Group Three received aural, visual, and tactile stimuli. Group Four received aural, visual, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory stimuli. Following the motivational stimulation the subjects wrote stories. These were proofread, corrected, typed and rated for creativity by trained judges. A word count was also conducted. To analyze the data a computerized multiple regression program was run to obtain computed t-values. The use of the t-values with Dunnett’s tables provides for a multiple comparison with a control. An analysis of covariance procedure was used to obtain correlational information between four predictors and creative writing ability. Conclusions: Within the limitations of the study the findings of this investigation support the following conclusions: 1. The creative writing of fourth and sixth grade children is affected more by variations in motivational treatment than that of eighth grade children. 2. There tends to be a gradual increase in the length and creativity rating of stories from grades four through eight. 3. The creativity rating of stories by fourth, sixth, and eighth grade students is strongly related to the length of their stories. 4. Increasing the number of types of sensory stimuli prior to a writing experience has more effect upon length of stories than upon creativity of stories. 5. Increasing the number of types of sensory modes stimulated prior to writing has a mixed effect upon the length of stories written by fourth, sixth, and eighth grade children. The most significant increase in length is noted among fourth graders and the least among eighth graders. 6. The effect of increasing the number of sensory modes stimulated prior to writing upon the creativity rating of stories by fourth, sixth, and eighth graders is inconclusive. There is some evidence of a tendency to increase the creativity of stories by fourth and sixth graders. Stories by eighth graders remain relatively unaffected. 7. The creativity tests employed tended to be better predictors of creative writing ability than the IQ test