No general fourth-grade slump in divergent thinking: Grade 4 shows a plateau relative to Grade 3¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · quant-synthesisr3·q3
Currency · newest study 2019 · checked against its sources 2026-10-22 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q3 i? There is no significant difference in overall DT between Grade 3 and Grade 4; the outlier-adjusted SMD of 0.07 was non-significant, and equivalence was not formally tested. → Said-Metwaly 2019
Evidence¶
Said-Metwaly 2019¶
Said-Metwaly, S., Fernández-Castilla, B., Kyndt, E., Van den Noortgate, W., & Barbot, B. (2019). Does the Fourth-Grade Slump in Creativity Actually Exist? A Meta-Analysis of the Development of Divergent Thinking in School-Age Children and Adolescents. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Does+the+Fourth-Grade+Slump+in+Creativity+Actually+Exist
q3 · i? · quant-synthesis · r3
Sensitivity analysis in Results removing one outlier SMD yielded a Grade 3–4 SMD of "0.07 (p = .38)", a non-significant difference supporting a plateau rather than a slump. Equivalence was not formally tested.
"After removing one outlier SMD (belonging to Besançon & Lubart, 2008), the obtained SMD for overall DT between Grade 3 and Grade 4 was 0.07 (p = .38)."
Discussion¶
Learner Variables¶
- Creativity — outcome: instruction changes it
Related Claims¶
- Task content domain significantly moderates the Grade 3–4 DT difference, with a positive SMD for figural tasks and a negative SMD for verbal tasks — related
- Divergent thinking shows an overall upward developmental trend across Grades 1–12, peaking in Grade 9, with significant drops in Grades 7, 10, and 11 — reports the opposite
- DT test and country of study significantly moderate the Grade 3–4 originality trend, with a drop for WKCT and for eastern-country samples — related
- Intellectual giftedness significantly moderates the Grade 3–4 fluency trend: gifted subjects tend to increase while non-gifted subjects tend to decline — related
- Cross-cultural studies show Eastern children can outperform Western ones on creativity measures, and children with little schooling can show high divergent thinking — related
- A recent large-scale meta-analysis failed to find convincing evidence of developmental slumps in children's divergent thinking — a broader claim this one bears on
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
no-general-fourth-grade-slump |
title |
No general fourth-grade slump in divergent thinking: Grade 4 shows a plateau relative to Grade 3 |
description |
No general fourth-grade slump in divergent thinking: Grade 4 shows a plateau relative to Grade 3 |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
moderate |
newest_evidence |
2019 |
source_checked |
2026-10-22 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-21 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — said-metwaly-2019 |
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