Background. The paper focuses upon L.F. Obukhova's ideas about creativity in children, the search for objective mechanisms for the development of child thinking in solving creative problems. The paper is prepared in connection with the conference “Scientific Readings in Memory of L.F. Obukhova (1938-2016), Professor of Moscow State Lomonosov University” on the occasion of her 80th birthday.

The Objective of the analytical and theoretical research is rethinking the basic ideas of L.F. Obukhova in the study of key aspects of child creativity and systematic study of thinking based on ‘open-end’ type problems that allow multiple solutions.    

Design. The psychological characteristics of creativity in children and its relationship with other mental processes are consistently considered. The mental processes are perception, emotions, intelligence, imagination; age peaks and declines in the development of creativity of preschoolers. The paper presents a critical analysis of measuring creativity, the impact of learning on the development of children on the basis of popular programs and trainings of creative thinking. The paper highlights the prospects of Obukhova's scientific approach to the vital issues in understanding mental development of the child, the ‘intersection of ideas’ of representatives of cultural-historical and natural-scientific paradigms.

Results. The heuristic possibilities of the analysis of the general and divergences of representatives of two main scientific paradigms in modern psychology are shown. According to L.F. Obukhova, the Torrence's Picture Construction Test shows the convergent strategies of solution, which contradicts Guilford's understanding of the phenomena of creativity. The cultural-historical paradigm highlights the artificial approach to the process of thinking though the prism of multiple factors.

Findings. The analysis showed that underestimating the role of adults in the teaching creativity brings about a partial solution to the problem articulated by E.P. Torrence: «Can we Teach Children To Think Creatively?» Building a comprehensive view of the mechanisms that induce creative processes brings closer to a deeper understanding of the issues of development and learning.