Predictors of Cognitive and Motor Creativity in Childhood

Movement is an intrinsic part of infants' and children's brain and cognitive development. Creativity theories and models have mainly focused on cognitive creativity, assessed for example with the alternative uses test in adults. More recently, researchers have proposed an embodied model of creativity. The present study investigated the relationship between personality traits, self-regulation, cognitive abilities, and both cognitive and motor creativity in 6- to 7-year-old primary school pupils (n = 152). We assessed cognitive creativity with a drawing task and motor creativity with Bertsch's test. We hypothesized that better emotional regulation skills, and self-regulation more broadly, would allow individuals to harness their creative potential for creative achievement and that fluid intelligence and inhibitory control, measured by a delayed reward task, would predict cognitive creativity and motor creativity, respectively. Our results showed that motor and cognitive aspects of creativity were associated with both common and specific individual differences in cognition, self-regulation, and personality traits. Fluid intelligence, the ability to wait for a reward, and strengths for creativity showed positive associations of similar size with motor and cognitive creativity. Higher cognitive and motor creativity were associated with fewer emotional problems. Motor creativity showed a greater positive relationship with cognitive and affective self-regulation responses to a physical challenge than cognitive creativity, which mediated the association between strengths for creativity and motor creativity. Our research highlights the relevance of movement in the development of cognition in childhood and invites further study of an embodied approach to creativity.