Neuropsychology of creativity in children and adolescents. Clinical approach from an interdisciplinary perspective

For some years, we have been observing the contribution of neuropsychology to the clinical and educational field as a line to optimize the neurodevelopment of children. Although it is currently a young science, it offers diagnostic tools that make it possible to evaluate and intervene effectively in their development. One of them is the area of creativity, in which we find different researches that have shown the great implication of the prefrontal cortex and the executive function in this process (Flaherty, 2005), highlighting their importance during development in the infantile-juvenile stage. Therefore, knowing the neuropsychological substratum of creativity will help us to promote its development and create intervention programs that are better suited to the needs and characteristics of children of these ages, with or without neurodevelopmental disorders. Among the reasons that have led to performing and focusing the work on this subject are: providing knowledge from the practice in neurobiological, neuropsychological and neuroeducational aspects that is useful to professionals in various fields (teachers, psychologists or neurologists) who work daily with children, trying to offer an integrative perspective of the subject. In this table, we will offer the vision of child neurology, analyzing the areas of the child’s brain involved in creativity, the neurocognitive approach on how to develop divergent thinking from early ages. We will also address strategies to train creativity with music therapy techniques and analyze the contributions of studies that have investigated the creative potential of ADHD.

Silvia Hidalgo holds a PhD in Psychology from the University of Malaga (UMA) (in 2005) and a Master’s Degree in Clinical Neuropsychology (Pediatric Itineraries, II UPO Edition, 2012). She studied Psychology (in 1991), clinical itinerary, and Pedagogy (1995), both in (UMA). She has participated in more than 50 training courses and national and international conferences related to the area of ​​child-youth clinical psychology and has presented numerous communications and papers. She is a Professor at the University of Málaga, Faculty of Psychology, Department of Evolutionary Psychology and Education, since 2004. She has combined teaching tasks with clinical activity for more than 25 years. She is a specialist in psychotherapy and neuropsychologist in area of infant-juvenile clinic. In the AVANZA Psychology Centre, she performs evaluation and diagnostic functions, psychoeducational treatment, training for parents and professionals, with a multi-professional team qualified in the health area of the children’s clinic. Likewise, Dr. Hidalgo’s centre is a reference entity for ADHD and postgraduate training with different Spanish universities (UMA, UPO, UNIR, UNED), with which the centre has collaboration agreements. In addition, Dr. Hidalgo has been part of R + D + I + D projects, such as “The Validation Process of the Intelligence Test for Preschool and Primary IV (WIPSSI-IV) (PEARSON, 2013), ATENTO Project (TEA Edic. 2017), and BD project (TEA Edic. 2019), among others. In the field of neuropsychology, she is a member of SANP (in English, Andalusian Society of Neuropsychology) and she has been academic deputy director and speaker in the I and II Specialization Course in Child and Adolescent Clinical Neuropsychology (UMA, 2014 and 2015), Andalusian Congress of Neuropsychology (SANP, 2015) with the Workshop “Update on evaluation and intervention in ADHD: case studies” and more recently, Academic Assistant Director of the I, II and III Course of University Expert in Clinical Child Neuropsychology (UMA, courses 2016-17, 2017-18 and 2018-19), teaching topics: “ADHD Neuropsychology ” and “Applied Workshop on Child Neuropsychological Batteries and Neuropsychological Intervention Programs”. She has also participated as a speaker in numerous congresses with recognized scientific prestige in the field of child and adolescent psychology, such as the National Symposiums and International Congresses organized by the AITANA Group on “Clinical Psychology and Health in Children and Adolescents”, attending continuously from 2011 to the present.