Guiding Creative Talent

In 1958 when the Bureau of Educational Research of the University of Minnesota began its studies of creative thinking, it felt that what was needed was a set of tasks which could be used from kindergarten through graduate school. Thus, it first attempted to adapt Guilford's ( 1951) materials with this objective in mind.

Accordingly, the Bureau developed as a start two alternate forms of the following Guilford-type tasks: Unusual Uses, Impossibilities, Consequences, Problem Situations, Improvements, and Problems. Adaptation was accomplished by substituting objects or situations more familiar to children. Thus, subjects were instructed to think of unusual uses of "tin cans" instead of bricks and to imagine all of the things that might happen, "if animals and birds could speak the language of men" instead of "what would happen, if all national and local laws were suddenly abolished."

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