Ideation training benefits transfer by domain: verbal training raised verbal and figural creativity, figural training only figural¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · review r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2026 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Verbal ideation training produced significant increases in both verbal and figural creativity, while figural training improved only figural tasks. → Gu 2026

Evidence¶

Gu 2026¶

Gu, X., Ritter, S. M., Frossard, F., van den Boom, L., Delfmann, L. R. & Barajas, M. (2026). Fostering creativity in formal schooling: A systematic review of explicit and implicit interventions for young learners. Educational Research Review. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2026.100784

q2 · i? · review · r2

Narrative review of Fink et al. (2020), a comparison of verbal and figural ideation training in primary school students. The review reports the asymmetric transfer pattern: 'verbal training led to significant increases in both verbal and figural creativity', while figural training improved only the figural task. No effect sizes are printed.

"Their study revealed that verbal training led to significant increases in both verbal and figural creativity, but figural training only led to improvements in a figural task."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Explicit creativity training programs are effective in fostering creativity in formal schooling — a broader claim this one bears on
• Ideation-based interventions are a robustly implemented explicit approach that improves creative performance — a broader claim this one bears on
• Concrete reward increases children's mean ideational fluency on creativity tasks relative to control conditions — related
• Rewarding only 'good' ideas in a final task produced no incentive effect, but this condition was confounded and excluded from the main analysis — related
• Reward effects hold across individual creativity tasks, with immediate reward significant on all four tasks and delayed reward on three — related
• The spatial curriculum produced near transfer to improved spatial scanning and increased self-reported spatial habits of mind, but not to mental rotation — related