Kandemirci, Birsu;
Beaty, Roger E;
Johnson, Dan;
Oliver, Bonamy R;
Kovas, Yulia;
Toivainen, Teemu;
(2025)
What is creative in childhood writing? Computationally measured linguistic characteristics explain much of the variance in subjective human-rated creativity scores.
Learning and Individual Differences
, 118
, Article 102626. 10.1016/j.lindif.2025.102626.
Preview |
Text
Oliver_1-s2.0-S1041608025000019-main.pdf Download (1MB) | Preview |
Abstract
The present study investigated the extent to which linguistic features of children's stories (analysed using automated techniques), predicted human-rated Creative Expressiveness and Logic scores (both assessed with the Consensual Assessment Technique). A sample of 160 children (Mage = 8.99 years, SD = 0.3) wrote stories based on three pictures. Eleven linguistic characteristics were measured: Length, Grammar, Originality, Controlled Lexical Diversity, Uncontrolled Lexical Diversity, Divergent Semantic Integration (DSI), Referential Cohesion, Narrativity, Syntactic Simplicity, Word Concreteness and Deep Cohesion. The results showed that 51 % of the variance in Creative Expressiveness was explained by Length, DSI, Originality, Grammar, and Controlled Lexical Diversity (sr2 = 0.01 to 0.14). In comparison, 28 % of the variance in Logic scores was accounted for by DSI, Grammar, Controlled Lexical Diversity, Syntactic Simplicity, and Narrativity (sr2 = 0.01 to 0.06). These findings offer insights for educational practices by identifying the linguistic characteristics relevant to children's creative writing as opposed to logical narration.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | What is creative in childhood writing? Computationally measured linguistic characteristics explain much of the variance in subjective human-rated creativity scores |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.lindif.2025.102626 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2025.102626 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
| Keywords: | Creativity, assessment, computational, narrative, development |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Psychology and Human Development |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10202986 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
