Creativity outcomes of physical activity interventions for children and adolescents: A systematic review

•PA interventions affect creativity differently in children and adolescents.•PA enhances creativity, effects vary by PA and participant characteristics.•Effective PA types: games, motor skills, sports, drama; not balancing, walking.•Volume of PA is crucial, frequency is less critical for improving creativity.•Moderator variables: age, baseline creativity, activity status (active/inactive). The objective of this systematic review was to evaluate the evidence on Physical Activity (PA) interventions to foster thinking domain of creativity in children and adolescents, and to investigate the acute and chronic PA interventions variables that moderate creativity outcomes. This review was conducted using the PRISMA framework. A total of 14 studies were identified using WOS and SCOPUS (12 chronic PA and two acute PA intervention), which matched the following criteria: (i) peer-reviewed, longitudinal experimental studies; (ii) studies that included a sample of children or adolescents aged 3–18 years of age; incorporated a PA intervention as the independent variable; (iii) studies with at least one measure of creativity. The total number of participants in the included studies combined was 1539. The results of this review indicate that chronic PA can enhance creativity in school children and adolescents, but the effects varied considerably depending on the qualitative characteristics of the PA and the characteristics of participants. The results of this review suggest that the type of PA, the volume and the intensity of PA may be crucial factors for improving creativity. Regarding the type of PA, games, motor skills, sports and drama activities seem to be the most appropriate, while balancing and walking do not report positive effects. An important finding to emerge from the synthesis was that volume is a key factor, while how they achieve that volume does not have critical implications, as various frequencies of PA were associated with improved creativity. Furthermore, this review identified various moderator variables such as the age of the participants, their creativity level at baseline and whether they were active or inactive.