Using Mental Imagery to Enhance Gifted Elementary Students’ Creative Writing

ABSTRACT The purpose of the present research was to examine the effects of mental imagery instruction on gifted elementary students’ creative writing and development of imagery vividness. Thirty‐seven fourth‐and fifth‐grade students were assigned to either a treatment or a control group and then participated in four group lessons over a two‐week period. Treatment subjects received instruction and practice in imagery usage through researcher‐developed passages that embedded highly imaginal sensory descriptions. Control subjects listened and responded to children's stories. Following each lesson, both groups completed creative writing assignments. To assess the effects of the treatment, two pretest‐posttest tasks were given, a creative writing sample and a survey of imagery vividness. On the creative writing task, treatment subjects significantly outperformed control subjects on originality and use of sensory descriptions but not on writing length. In addition, both groups significantly improved on the vividness of imagery task. These results indicate that instruction and practice in using imagery can enhance aspects of gifted students’ creative writing.