Creative Motor Actions As Emerging from Movement Variability

Abstract

In cognitive science, creative ideas are defined as original and feasible solutions in response to problems. A common proposal is that creative ideas are generated across dedicated cognitive pathways. Only after creative ideas have emerged, they can be enacted to solve the problem. We present an alternative viewpoint, based upon the dynamic systems approach to perception and action, that creative solutions emerge in the act rather than before. Creative actions, thus, are as much a product of individual constraints as they are of the task and environment constraints. Accordingly, we understand creative motor actions as functional movement patterns that are new to the individual and/or group and adapted to satisfy the constraints on the motor problem at hand. We argue that creative motor actions are promoted by practice interventions that promote exploration by manipulating constraints. Exploration enhances variability of functional movement patterns in terms of either coordination or control solutions. At both levels, creative motor actions can emerge from finding new and degenerate adaptive motor solutions. Generally speaking, we anticipate that in most cases, when exposed to variation in constraints, people are not looking for creative motor actions, but discover them while doing an effort to satisfy constraints. For future research, this paper achieves two important aspects: it delineates how adaptive (movement) variability is at the heart of (motor) creativity, and it sets out methodologies toward stimulating adaptive variability.

Effect of environmental constraints on multi-segment coordination patterns during the tennis service in expert performers

“…They showed that body inclination was an important feature of alpine skiing that determined over 50% of total variance in elite racers. Further studies have also supported inter-trial variability as an index of adaptation to the situational demands (Wilson, Simpson, Van Emmerik, & Hamill, 2008;Davids, Araújo, Seifert, & Orth, 2015;Orth, ve der Kamp, Memmert, & Savelsbergh, 2017). Wilson et al (2008) showed that expert triple jumpers had higher coordination variability while less skilled jumpers displayed low coordination variability.…”

Creating adaptive athletes: the athletic skills model for enhancing physical literacy as a foundation for expertise

“…By designing how task, individual, and environmental constraints interact, situations can be created that support adaptability and creativity of the performer because they require a search for useful movement solutions that solve the motor problem at hand. When manipulating constraints, the coordination pattern is influenced without any instruction and, in some cases, this can lead to new and highly functional behaviour (Orth, van der Kamp, Memmert, & Savelsbergh, 2017). In this respect, creative solution that results in adaptive actions can emerge without that necessarily being the aim of the individualthe learner is simply aiming to succeed at the task.…”

“…Second, we should be able to create learning environments that foster adaptability. In the process of solving motor problems, the performer can find movement solutions that lead to new and highly functional, creative behaviour (Orth, van der Kamp, Memmert, & Savelsbergh, 2017). By encouraging greater diversification of capabilities in a population of learners and athletes, the greater the adaptability and creativity of the developmental system overall.…”

An ecological approach to creativity in making

“…We will do so incorporating Ingold's recent ideas of making into the ecological framework that was developed by Gibson. It is argued that because behavior is not preplanned in the mind, but emerges out of the interplay of movement and information, creativity does not so much exist in the head but in the unfolding of action (see Hristovski, Davids, Araujo, and Passos (2011) and Orth, van der Kamp, Memmert, and Savelsbergh (2017) for accounts of creativity in movement sciences that follow a similar line of thinking). Moreover, we claim that Gibson's conceptual framework can further the investigation into creativity.…”