CREATIVITY AS A MEDIATING VARIABLE IN INFERENTIAL READING COMPREHENSION

The research reported here examined the effect of readers’ abilities to be creative on their ability to make inferences in reading prose passages. Two‐hundred‐five children from a Greek‐American parochial New York elementary school and from a parochial New Orleans elementary school were participants in the study. Responses to nine divergent thinking subtests, answers from a questionnaire measuring exposure to passage experiences, and 120 inferential questions for 24 prose passages were utilized to determine possible effects of creativity on inferential reading comprehension. Results of a stepwise multiple regression analysis indicated a statistically significant multiple correlation between the one inferential reading comprehension criterion variable and the nine creativity predictor variables (R=.35, df=9,187, F=2.84, p<.05). The data support predictions that creative ability enhances schema development, the formation of mental framework. There is also the indication that the risk‐taking characteristic of creative individuals and the ability to manipulate and reorganize symbols and words is related to the ability to infer when reading text. The practical implications of these findings for teachers of reading are presented which suggest ways in which creative abilities, the abilities which release the mind to see in new ways, are linked with the traditional methods of organizing these thoughts into new avenues.