Motor Creativity and Self-Concept

Abstract

Creative children often have difficulty in forming their self-concept because parents may suppress their creative ideas. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between motor creativity and self-concept. Wyrick's Motor Creativity Test and the Pictorial Scale of Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance for Young Children were administered to a sample of 414 children aged from 6 ± 0.3 years to 7 ± 0.3 years. Factor analysis for the self-concept measures revealed a 4-factor solution. The amount of variance explained by all 4 factors was 30.28% with the first factor explaining most of the variance (18.2%). Correlation analysis related motor creativity with the self-concept factors, and specifically with the first factor. It seems that perceived maternal acceptance has a significant role in explaining children's motor creativity.

Notes

Note. Numbers in parentheses next to each item denote its order in the original questionnaire.

Note. The shaded area denotes correlations among Motor creativity tasks and self-concept factors. Boldface indexes exceed |.30| and all correlations are significant at the .01 level; Nmin 4 2. MCI = Mother-Child Interaction. PSA = Peer Social Acceptance. PSC = Perceived Scholastic Competence. PPC = Perceived Physical Competence. MCP = Motor Creativity—Parallel Line Task. MCBW = Motor creativity—Ball–Wall Task. MCH = Motor Creativity—Hoop Task.

Note. r′ denotes the Correlation of the variables with the first canonical variate and R′ the respective standardized coefficient. Canonical correlation = .50 (variance overlapping = .25%).