Examples from Visual Surroundings as an Incentive for Children with Mild Intellectual Disability to Express their Creativity in the Art Domain

Abstract

In getting to know the nature of children's creative expression, we talk ever less about teaching creativity and more about the ways of stimulating, and the conditions that ought to be provided for creativity to be manifested. The aim of this work is to determine the difference in creative abilities of children with mild intellectual disability (MID) before and after visual prompting in the process of creating an art drawing. Creativity was assessed on a sample of 69 subjects, using the Test for creative thinking measured by drawing, and a drawing on the topic of "Peculiar flower", designed specifically for the purpose of this research. After a detailed explanation, the children engaged in working on a drawing on the given topic, with no previous encouragement. After some time the children were prompted using various examples from their visual surroundings, after which they were told to make a drawing and be as creative as possible. Comparing the results obtained before and after prompting, we point out the importance of visual incentive for the expression of children's creativity on all aspects of the flower drawing (color, shape, proportion and spatial distribution), as well as on certain aspects of Urban-Jellen test (completion, humor, material manipulation and non-stereotypical use of elements). Based on the results obtained in this research, we stress the importance of forming sensibility towards characteristics of objects and traits of the environment that can be perceived by eyesight, which would account for a good postulation for encouraging creative expression in the visual domain.