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The study examined the effect of an improvisation intervention on figure skating performance, self-esteem, creativity, and mindfulness skills. Nine elite figure skaters participated in a 10-session program based on Cirque du Soleil artistic principles. A mixed methodology using questionnaires, competition scores, and interviews was used to test the program effects on these variables. Descriptive statistics revealed small but imperative increases in competition performance, perceived artistic performance, self-esteem, creativity, and mindfulness. Significant (p < .05) effect of time was revealed only for creativity and artistic performance variables. Qualitative data supported these results. Skaters described verbally that movements were performed more freely, attention was better focused on performance, and they overcame shyness. Quantitative and qualitative data are discussed interactively in relation to performance enhancement and personal growth.

The purpose of this paper is to increase awareness of creativity as a goal of adapted physical education, to describe assessment techniques, and to suggest instructional approaches for developing creativity in the movement setting. Creative behaviors that can be developed in handicapped children and youth include fluency, flexibility, originality, elaboration, risk-taking, courage, curiosity, and imagination. Research on creativity and handicapped children is identified and cited. Assessment instruments reviewed are Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, Wyrick Test of Motor Creativity, Torrance Test of Thinking Creatively in Action and Movement, TWU Motor Creativity Rating Scale, and Brennan Test of Creative Motor Performance. Instructional approaches described are dance and movement education, games analysis intervention, and shared decision-making versus teacher decision-making. Also discussed are modeling and the influence of specific teaching behaviors on handicapped children’s classroom responses.

A recently developed social psychological and biographical approach to the study of lives, life positioning analysis (LPA), is applied to the early life experiences of Canadian basketball player Steve Nash for the purpose of identifying sources of his athletic creativity and work ethic. The analysis focuses on Nash’s childhood and adolescence, especially his interactions with his father, brother, coaches, friends, and teammates. The interpretations, results, and conclusions offered describe specific types of interaction with these other individuals as likely influences on the development of important psychological aspects of the team oriented creativity that came to characterize Nash’s unique athletic style. The article concludes with a brief description of the unique yields and possible contributions of this type of biographical case study as a methodological approach in sport psychology.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether a dance program for preschool handicapped children can influence their creativity. This study was conducted in two schools in Illinois with 17 preschool handicapped children (Program I, N = 12; Program II, N = 5), ages 3 to 5 years. In each school there was a Program I and Program II. The children in Program I participated in the 12-week dance program which was based on sensory experiences utilizing Laban’s effort actions. Those in Program II did not have the dance program but did participate in an adapted physical education program. At the beginning and end of the study, the Torrance Test of Thinking Creatively in Action and Movement (TCAM) was administered individually. It consisted of three subscales: fluency, imagination, and originality. A two-way MANCOVA on the TCAM scores revealed that the experimental group improved over the comparison group (p <.05) on the set of subscale scores. Subsequent univariate ANCOVA analyses were performed on the data to determine which dependent measures were significantly different between the groups. The results demonstrated that imagination (p <.01) was significantly changed by the dance program but that fluency and originality were not.

The capacity for random movement production is known to be limited in humans (e.g., Newell, Deutsch, & Morrison, 2000). We examined the effects of a brief mindfulness induction on random movement production because there are useful implications for variability in solving movement-related problems. The main task involved randomly clicking the 9 boxes in a 3 × 3 grid presented on a computer screen for five minutes. We characterized the sequence of clicking in terms of degrees of randomness, or periodicity, based on the fit, or probability, of the experimental data with its best fitting Bayesian network (4-click memory nodes) using the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach. Sixty-three participants were randomly assigned to either the experimental or the control condition. Mixed design repeated-measures ANOVA results show that the short mindfulness induction had a positive effect on the randomness of the sequence subsequently produced. This finding suggests that mindfulness may be a suitable strategy for increasing random movement behavior.

In decision-making research, one important aspect of real-life decisions has so far been neglected: the mood of the decision maker when generating options. The authors tested the use of the take-the-first (TTF) heuristic and extended the TTF model to understand how mood influences the option-generation process of individuals in two studies, the first using a between-subjects design (30 nonexperts, 30 near-experts, and 30 experts) and the second conceptually replicating the first using a within-subject design (30 nonexperts). Participants took part in an experimental option-generation task, with 31 three-dimensional videos of choices in team handball. Three moods were elicited: positive, neutral, and negative. The findings (a) replicate previous results concerning TTF and (b) show that the option-generation process was associated with the physiological component of mood, supporting the neurovisceral integration model. The extension of TTF to processing emotional factors is an important step forward in explaining fast choices in real-life situations.