3

ORIGINALITY OF IMAGERY IN IDENTIFYING

CREATIVE TALENT IN MUSIC

E. Paul Torrance is Professor and Chairman,

Department of Educational Psychology,
The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia

The authors have frequently been impressed concerning the

great importance of imagery in the creative processes of outstand-
ing creative people, as these people have attempted to describe
their experiences. Much of the instructional materials developed
by the senior author and his associates (Cunnington and Torrance,
1965a; Myers and Torrance, 1965, 1966) have been predicated
upon the idea that it is important to give children experiences
that will enrich their storehouse of images and give them practice
in imagining. The study described herein represents an attempt
to explore the role of imagery in the accomplishments of creative
young people in the field of music and the possibility of using a
measure of originality of imagery as one approach in identifying
creative talent in music.

SOUNDS AND IMAGES

The key instrument used in this investigation is Sounds and
Images (Cunnington and Torrance, 1965b). This instrument was
designed to be used either as a testing device to assess originality
of thinking or as a training medium to motivate creative writing
or visual art activities. Complete in two similar yet separate exer-
cises (Forms I and II), the recording may be used as the basis
for two or more training or motivation sessions or as a test-retest
package to assess creative growth. In the present investigation,
both forms were administered in close succession to provide good
test-retest data.

* The authors are indebted to Dr. Lee Bristol, President of Westminister Choir
College, and Mr. Edgar Thomas, Assistant to Dr. Bristol, for collecting the
data for this study.
 4

Each of the exercises contains instructions which invite the lis-

tener to depict in progressively more imaginative terms a series of
provocative and challenging audio effects. The instructions and
audio effects represent a conscious attempt to build into a single
set of materials several tested principles for the production of con-
ditions facilitating creative response - the production of imagina-
tive, original imag~s. Included are such devices as progressive
warm-up, making divergent or original thinking legitimate, invi-
tation to regress and &dquo;have fun,&dquo; freedom from inhibiting sets,
and the like. The sound effects themselves range from easy, famil-
iar, and coherent to difficult, unfamiliar, and incoherent.
The scoringguides for evaluating the originality of the responses
were developed by tabulating all of the responses made by a sam-
ple of 544 children and adults. Responses were then scaled in
terms of their statistical infrequency and lack of obviousness.
Scoring reliability was found to range from .88 to .97, averaging
about .95. The test-retest reliability for the subjects of this study
was .77.
The creators of Sounds and Images (Cunnington and Torrance,
1965b) believed that scores derived from this procedure would add
a new dimension to the assessment of creative thinking skills. It

brings into play abilities for producing images in response to non-

verbal sounds and for getting away from the most obvious and
commonplace images. It had been observed by Cunnington and
Torrance that some individuals characteristically responded with
greater intensity of involvement (and greater imagination and
boldness) to one type of stimuli rather tlian another. Thus, it was
hypothesized that students gifted in music would achieve higher
scores than other similar groups of young people and that the
more creative music students would be differentiated by their scores
from those music students who have not produced original music
compositions and have not won recognition for original music
compositions.
Previous research by Torrance and Wu (1966) and Torrance
and Gupta (1964) had given some credence both to the idea that
Sounds and Images is related to creative functioning and assesses
aspects of this functioning not well represented in other types of
tests of creative functioning. For example, Torrance and Wu (1966)
found that scores by college students on Sounds and Images cor-
related .75 with scores on a test designed to assess creative person-
ality functioning (What Kind of Person Are You?) . This validity
coefficient was significant at the .001 level of confidence with 41
subjects. Torrance and Gupta (1964) found only small, though
 5

statistically significant, correlationsbetween scores on Sounds and

Images and other measures of creative thinking ability. A measure
of originality of creative writing correlated .21; measures of verbal
originality correlated .15 and .13; and measures of figural origi-
nality correlated .23 and .17. The number of subjects in the latter
study was 647.

SUBJECTS
The subjects of this study were 137 students enrolled in West-
minister Choir College located at Princeton, N. J. This college
enj oys an international reputation for producing both performers
and composers. Its president, Lee Bristol, is President of the Cre-
ative Education Foundation and has long been known for his
interest in a more creative kind of education. A relatively large
number of the subjects have produced original compositions and
have won recognition for them. The subjects were tested by Edgar
Thomas on both Forms I and II of Sounds and Images. He also
obtained information from the subjects concerning their music
careers and achievements.

CRITERION QUESTIONNAIRE
The criterion questionnaire requested information about the stu-
dent’s previous music participation and training, his interest in
music composition, his composition work for different performance
media, number of music compositions produced, recognition for
music achievement, and the like.

TAB LE 1

RESULTS
Table lprovides information concerning the means and standard
deviations on both forms of Sounds and Images for the subject of
6

this study and comparison groups of teachers in the Twin Cities

area of Minnesota. It will be noted that the music students achieved
higher scores on both forms than did the Twin Cities teachers. The
differences are statistically significant at better than the five percent
level of confidence.
Table 2 presents a summary of the validity coefficients for both
Forms I and II of Sounds and Images for each of the major
creativity criteria for the Westminister Choir College students. It

TABLE 2

*
Significant at one percent level of confidence
* *
Significant at five percent level of confidence
will be noted that all of these validity coefficients are significant
at the one percent level of confidence or better and that the highest
validity coefficients are for experience in music composition.
IMPLICATIONS
The foregoing results support the idea that students gifted in
music tend to have rich, imaginative, original imagery in com-
parison with unselected groups and that music students who show
promise in composition excell those who are interested primarily
in performance skills. The results suggest further that skills in
producing imagery should be developed among young children
showing promise and interest in music composition.
development of skills in producing imagery has been an
The
important objective of much of the instructional material developed
by the senior author and his associates. Many of the &dquo;Can You
 7

Imugine?&dquo; type exercises have the enrichment of imagery as a ma-

j or purpose. For example, consider the following exercise from
For Those Who Wonder (dyers and Torrance, 1966 ):
Can you imagine what might happen if rabbits were as slow as
snails? .

or if snails were as ferocious as tigers?

or if tigers were as playful as monkeys?
or if monkeys were as quiet as mice? Etc.
Then the first exercise in Can You Imagine? (Myers and Torrance,
1965) asks the child to imagine what could happen if every flower
in the world were yellow, if cows had manes like lions have, and
the like.
A series of features created by the senior author for six-, seven-, .

and eight-year olds emphasizes diliberately the development of skills

in producing imagery in response to sound. For example, one of
these is entitled &dquo;Listening and Pictures&dquo; (Torrance, 1967 ) and en-
courages the child to use his imagination in thinking of pictures
while listening to sounds in nature or in daily life with eyes closed.
After a warmup exercise, the child is given the following encourage-
ment :
&dquo;Now, close your eyes and listen again. This time don’t
try to name the sounds. Think of what they remind you of.
From each sound, what pictures do you get in your mind’s
eye? Listen for at least five minutes and describe as many
pictures as you can. Really let your imagination go! Try to
describe them so that someone else can see them.&dquo;
In other exercises, children encouraged to tell stories and
are

paint pictures with sounds (Torrance and Torrance, 1967), to tell

things as though they were happening (Torrance and Torrance,
1968), and to tell stories with movement or interpret music by
movement (Torrance, 1968).
The authors believe that such exercises not only enrich and de-
velop imagery and make children more fully aware of the wonders
of their environment, but help develop their problem solving skills
and ability to cope with developmental and environmental problems.

REFERENCES
Cunnington, B. F. and E. P. Torrance. Imagi/Craft (Albums of recorded
dramatizations and creative thinking exercises) Boston: Ginn and Com-
pany, 1965a.
Cunnington, B. F. and E. P. Torrance. Sounds and Images. Boston: Ginn
and Company, 1965b.
Myers, R. E. and E. P. Torrance. Can You Imagine? Boston: Ginn and Com-
8

parry, 1965.
Myers, R. E. and E. P. Torrance. For Those Who Wonder. Boston: Ginn
and Company, 1966.

Torrance, E. P. Listening for pictures. Music for Primaries, 1967, 1 (1),

7-8.
Torrance, E. P. Saying it with movements. Music for Primaries, 1968, 3 (3),
14-15.
Torrance, E. P. and R. Gupta. Development and Evaluation of Programmed
Experiences in Creative Thinking. Minneapolis: Bureau of Educational
Research, University of Minnesota, 1964.
Torrance, E. P. and Pansy Torrance. Telling stories and painting pictures
with sounds. Music for Primaries, 1967, 2 (2), 10-12.
Torrance, E. P. and Pansy Torrance. Like the thing happening. Music for
, 6-7.
Primaries, 1968, 3 (2)
Torrance, E. P. and Jing-Jyi Wu. Preliminary Manual for the "What Kind
of Person Are You?" Test. Minneapolis’ Minnesota Studies of Creative
Behavior, 1966, (Mimeographed).