Divergent thinking shows the ability to search for new ideas, which is an important factor contributing to innovation and problem solving. Current divergent thinking tests allow researchers to study children’s divergent thinking from the age of 3 years on. This article presents the first measure of divergent thinking that can be used with children as young as 2 years. The Unusual Box test is a nonverbal and nonimitative test in which children play individually with a novel toy and novel objects. Divergent thinking is scored as the number of different actions performed. Study 1 shows that the Unusual Box test is a valid measure of divergent thinking as it correlates with standard measures of divergent thinking in 3- and 4-year-olds. Study 2 indicates that the test can be used with 2-year-olds, as it shows high test–retest reliability, demonstrating that 2-year-olds can think divergently. Across both studies, individual differences and age-related changes were found, indicating that some children are better at divergent thinking than others and that children’s divergent thinking increases with age. This test will allow researchers to gain insight into the early emergence of divergent thinking.

Creativity is an essential human ability, allowing adaptation and survival. Twenty‐nine 1‐year‐olds and their parents were tested on divergent thinking (DT), a measure of creative potential counting how many ideas one can generate. Toddlers' and parents' DT was moderately to highly correlated. Toddlers showed a wide range of DT scores, which were reliable on retesting. This is the first study to show children think divergently as early as 1 year. This research also suggests 1‐year‐olds' DT is related to parents', opening up future research into whether this relationship is due to genetics and/or social learning at its emergence. Understanding DT at its emergence could allow for interventions while neurological development is most plastic, which could improve DT across the life span.

By their fourth year of life, children are expert imitators, but it is unclear how this ability develops. One approach suggests that certain types of experience might forge associations between the sensory and motor representations of an action that may facilitate imitation at a later time. Sensorimotor experience of this sort may occur when an infant's action is imitated by a caregiver or when socially synchronous action occurs. This learning approach, therefore, predicts that the strength of sensory-motor associations should depend on the frequency and quality of previous experience. Here, we tested this prediction by examining automatic imitation, that is, the tendency of an action stimulus to facilitate the performance of that action and interfere with the performance of an incompatible action. We required children (aged between 3 years 8 months and 7 years 11 months) to respond to actions performed by an experimenter (e.g., two hands clapping) with both compatible actions (i.e., two hands clapping) and incompatible actions (i.e., two hands waving) at different stages in the experimental procedure. As predicted by a learning account, actions thought to be performed in synchrony (i.e., clapping/waving) produced stronger automatic imitation effects when compared with actions where previous sensorimotor experience is likely to be more limited (e.g., pointing/hand closing). Furthermore, these automatic imitation effects were not found to vary with age, with both compatible and incompatible responses quickening with age. These findings suggest a role for sensorimotor experience in the development of imitative ability.

cannot be sure that children's pretense is in fact novel, or whether they simply copy or follows others' instructions. Some experimental work has attempted to capture children's novel pretense (Nielsen & Christie, 2008; Rakoczy, et al., 2004). However, we argue that what looked like novel pretense in these studies could be explained by deferred imitation. This is the first experiment to show preschoolers create their own novel object substitutions, without relying on deferred imitation. Generating Object Substitutions Pretend play differs from functional play as the actions performed during pretend play are technically incorrect (e.g., drinking from empty cup, talking to banana; Hoicka & Gattis, 2008; Hoicka, Jutsum, & Gattis, 2008; Hoicka & Martin, 2016). One form of pretend play, object substitution, requires temporarily suppressing the typical action for the object while performing an action that is typical for another object (e.g., pretending banana is phone; Tomasello, Striano, & Rochat, 1999). Naturalistic research suggests children perform object substitution during free play from 2 years (e.g., Belsky & Most, 1981; McCune-Nicolich, 1981). However, these studies do not provide information on the content of their play. Additionally, it is difficult to determine whether children's object substitutions are generated by children themselves, or whether they are copied from others (immediately after observation, or using deferred 1 imitation; see Hoicka & Akhtar, 2012). 2 Experimental research suggests 2-to 3-year-olds perform object substitutions (e.g.,

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