Influence of Dyadic Interaction on Creative Functioning

Two experiments, one with college students and the other with 5-yr.-old children as Ss, were conducted to test the hypothesis that dyadic interaction will facilitate the production of original ideas among individuals. 20 college Ss were administered 4 tasks from the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking under standard conditions; 20 others randomly assigned to dyads from the same population were tested under the same conditions except that they were encouraged to hitchhike on one another's ideas but forbidden to repeat an idea produced by the other. Similarly, 24 5-yr.-olds were tested alone and 22 of their randomly selected classmates were tested in dyads. Results indicate that dyadic interaction facilitated originality of thinking but the differences are stronger for the college students than for the 5-yr.-olds.