Can Creativity Be Improved by an Attention-Broadening Training Program? An Exploratory Study Focusing on Team Sports

摘要

A look at a number of recent experiments reveals that the interaction between breadth of attention and creative performance is mainly based on correlational studies and laboratory creativity tasks, yet task complexity is seldom taken into consideration. Discussion of several methodological aspects recommends the field of sport in particular as a fruitful area in which complex behavior can be studied in a complex context. An exploratory 6-month longitudinal study (n = 48) proved the influence of an attention-broadening training program on the development of creative performance in the area of team sports. Creative performance was measured by a real-world sport-specific creativity task with 2 different kinds of complexity levels. A comparison between a control group and a treatment group, which focused on training a narrow breadth of attention, showed that the creative performance improved significantly (partial x{sup}2 = 51). An attention-broadening training program facilitated greater improvements in creative performance in complex tasks than in simple tasks. The results of this exploratory study are discussed in terms of theoretical and practical implications.