Adults outperformed preschoolers in creative tasks — The Guardian

Researchers at the University of Graz in Austria found that adults can perform creative tasks better than preschool children, although they feel less confident and experience anxiety more often. The study involved 92 children aged four to seven and 70 adults, mostly around 20 years old, The Guardian reports.

Three creative tasks

Participants were asked to come up with as many creative ways as possible to use a tin can in three minutes, draw anything with no time limit, and depict an imaginary animal in eight minutes. Judges assessed the work for originality, usefulness and overall creativity.

Adults received higher scores across all three criteria, especially when the tasks had a clear goal and time limits. At the same time, children reported greater confidence, stronger motivation and lower anxiety while completing the exercises.

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Confidence and fear of evaluation

Matthias Benedek, the study's senior author, noted that children's enthusiasm for play is often mistakenly perceived as a higher level of creative ability. According to the researchers' conclusions, children experiment more freely and view mistakes as part of the process, while adults focus more on the goal and may reject unusual ideas because they fear evaluation.

The authors stressed that the work has limitations: it compares only two age groups at a single point in time and therefore does not make it possible to establish exactly how ageing affects creativity. The study was conducted by the University of Graz together with UCLouvain in Belgium and Yale University, and the results were published in the journal PLOS One.