Some young children would freeze up and be unable to respond or give only a few of the most obvious kinds of responses. This observation made me recognize that they had been talking and drawing for a relatively short time. At the same time, we recognized that they had been moving all their lives and using movement to get what they wanted. Soon we developed scoring procedures and norms, conducted reliability studies, and began developing studies of validity. The test was shown to be free of racial or socioeconomic bias.
Users seem to have found it to be a satisfactory test, easy to administer and score.
Since almost every kind of creativity seems to require imagery, we found that we could use sounds and onomatopoeic words as a basis for developing images. There are alternate forms for children and for adults. Of all the different tests of creativity, Sounds and Images seems to be the most consistently valid across all forms of creative performances. From the beginning, I planned to develop a biographical or life experience inventory. I had been inspired by the success that we had achieved with Life Experience Inventories with survival instructors and the Korean jet aces, both of which required a great deal of creativity.