Abstract:

PURPOSE
This study set out to identify gifted elementary school students’ performance of imagination tasks. The focus is whether prior knowledge makes effects in imagination task performance in the idea generation for gifted children. Ward(1994) has studied college students imagined animals that might live on a planet somewhere else in the galaxy. But the majority of imagined creatures were structured by properties that are typical animals on earth: bilateral symmetry, sensory receptors, and appendages. He discussed in term of the concept of 'structured imagination'. That is, when subjects create a new member of a known category for an imaginary setting, their imagination is structured by a particular set of properties that are characteristic of that category. This study was designed to examine the structured imagination in gifted students using imagination tasks.

METHOD
The subjects was 15 gifted children(12 M, 3 F) at sixth grade who selected in the science gifted center attached university in D city, Korea. They were selected using multi-stage screening for gifted children in the area of science. The subjects were asked to the question of creative task developed by Smith, Ward and Schumacher(1993).; Task 1 was following. "Imagine a planet just like Earth existing somewhere in the universe. It is currently uninhabited. Your task is to design new creatures to inhabit the planet. Draw as many new and different creatures of your own creative design as you are able. Duplication of creatures now extinct or living on the planet Earth is not permitted. Provide both a side view and front view of each creature." In task 2, students were asked to draw another member of the same species as the first one, The subjects spent 20 min. drawing and labeling their creatures. Two coders examined students’ drawing and labeling and statements for the presence of standard Earth animal attributes, bilateral symmetry, appendages such as legs, arms, wings, tails, etc., sensory receptors such a eyes, ears, nose, mouth, etc. Evaluation criteria of structured imagination used such as bilateral symmetry, appendages, sense organs developed by Ward(1994). We focused observable properties and two rater scored it independently. The inter-rater reliability was computed for each of the rating categories using the formula(agreements - disagreements)/(agreement + disagreement). The reliabilities ranged from .90 to 1.00. Nonparametric tests, χ2 were used on data analysis.

RESULTS
The vast majority of animals were bilaterally symmetric(86.7%), had at least one major sensory organ(such as eyes, ears, or nose)(86.7%) and at least one type of major appendage(such as legs, arms, or wings)(93.3%) in task 1. Table 1 presents specifically structured imagination such as bilateral symmetry, appendages, sense organs of total response. Table 2 showed the most of animals were bilaterally symmetric(86.7%), had at least one major sensory organ(such as eyes, ears, or nose)(93.3%) and at least one type of major appendage(such as legs, arms, or wings)(86.7%) in task 2. These findings indicate that science gifted children's imagination is structured by existing categories.