the association between functional-emotional development and creative thinking in preschool children

the present study aims to investigate the association between emotional-functional evelopment and formation of creative thinking among children of 4-6 years old in mashhad city. to do this, 80 children and their mothers were selected from preschools of mashhad city based on cluster sampling method.  the level of creativity among children was measured through torrance test of critical thinking (ttct: visual b-form). the mothers of children in sample group answered the greenspan inventory of functional-emotional growth inventory. data analysis showed a significantly positive association between functional-emotional growth and aspects of fluidity, expansion and innovation in two groups of male and female preschool children as verified in creativity test. the results of simple linear regression analysis also showed that functional-emotional growth can predict 0.05 percent of variance in creativity. based on the results of t-test for independent groups, there was no significant different in the level of functional-emotional growth and creative thinking among male and female preschool students. the findings of present study supports the theory of greenspan (1997) regarding the significance of functional-emotional growth in integrated growth of human kind and emergence of higher levels of thinking.