Giving Ideas Some Legs or Legs Some Ideas? Children's Motor Creativity Is Enhanced by Physical Activity Enrichment: Direct and Mediated Paths.

Approaches to foster motor creativity differ according to whether creative movements are assumed to be enacted creative ideas, or solutions to emerging motor problems that arise from task and environmental constraints. The twofold aim of the current study was to investigate whether (1) an enriched physical education (PE) intervention delivered with a joint constraints-led and cognitive stimulation approach fosters motor creativity, and the responsiveness to the intervention is moderated by baseline motor and cognitive skills and sex; (2) the intervention may benefit motor creativity through gains in motor coordination, executive function, and creative thinking. Ninety-five children, aged 6-9 years, participated in a 6-month group randomized trial with specialist-led enriched PE vs.

Establishing a Scientific Consensus on the Cognitive Benefits of Physical Activity.

Research suggests that physical activity can be used as an intervention to increase cognitive function. Yet, there are competing views on the cognitive effects of physical activity and it is not clear what level of consensus exists among researchers in the field. The purpose of this study was two-fold: Firstly, to quantify the scientific consensus by focusing on the relationship between physical activity and cognitive function.

A Narrative Review of School-Based Physical Activity for Enhancing Cognition and Learning: The Importance of Relevancy and Integration.

Engaging in regular physical activity can have substantial cognitive and academic benefits for children, and is generally promoted for its beneficial effects on children's physical and mental health. Although embodied cognition research has convincingly shown the integral relationship of the human body and mind, in schools physical activity and cognitive activity are typically treated as unrelated processes. Consequently, most physical activities used are neither sufficiently relevant for nor fully integrated into the learning tasks.

Immediate and delayed effects of integrating physical activity into preschool children's learning of numeracy skills.

A cluster-randomized controlled trial was conducted to examine the effects of a 4-week program that integrated movements into cognitive tasks related to numerical skills. Participants (N = 120, M = 4.70 years, SD = 0.

Gesturing during mental problem solving reduces eye movements, especially for individuals with lower visual working memory capacity.

Non-communicative hand gestures have been found to benefit problem-solving performance. These gestures seem to compensate for limited internal cognitive capacities, such as visual working memory capacity. Yet, it is not clear how gestures might perform this cognitive function.