Uncovering the Role of Motor Performance and Creative Thinking on Sports Creativity in Primary School-aged Children

ABSTRACT

The demand for creativity in sports has attracted great interest, looking for factors that predict and release children’s creative behavior. Our aim was to determine the effects of motor skills and creative thinking on sports creativity, according to gender and age. 198 children (7.71 ± 1.39 years) were recruited. They completed three motor skills tests, the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking and the Creative Behavior Assessment in Teams Sports. Sprint and change of direction (COD) established to be complementary pairs since predicted all the creative thinking (CT) components. COD emerged as a reliable indicator for attempts and originality in game settings. Abstractness of titles emerged as a key component of CT on sports creativity. According to gender, sprint and COD differently predicted the outcomes; in younger ages both were more effective in predicting CT components. Our findings support an interplay between motor, thinking, and sports creativity, revealing commonalities in the underlying processes responsible for driving CT and novel behaviors in sport. Training programs enforced in motor performance and CT should be included in primary schools’ curricula and in youth sports academies, assisting sports scientists, coaches, and teachers to develop more effective enrichment environments for fostering children’s creative behavior and sports creativity.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to express their heartfelt appreciation to all primary schools that participated in this study. In addition, this work was supported in part by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation within the Gulbenkian Program for Knowledge.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Gulbenkian Academies for Knowledge within the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.