Response to an ambiguous stimulus and its cultural aspects

Abstract

Art therapy has been used in the Czech Republic since the 1950s, and the only thing that has changed over the course of time has been the target group in which art therapy is applied. Art therapy is currently used in three key areas: psychology, social work, and education, or, more precisely, special education. The purpose of the present study is to demonstrate the specific cultural differences during the use of art therapy procedures in the field of education, specifically during work with creativity. The target group for the research consisted of university students from Poland, the Czech Republic, Catalonia, and the Chinese People’s Republic. The students were all presented with the same ambiguous impulse, to which they had to respond artistically. The individual artistic responses were then classified into specific categories, and cultural differences were subsequently evaluated and described. The results highlight cultural differences in concepts and processing of non-specific stimulus in groups of future special pedagogues. The strategies for solving of the presented task were different in selected groups, indicating a different level of creativity tendencies.