The present study assesses the impact of Kindergarten-based yoga on cognitive performance, visual-motor coordination, and behavior of inattention and hyperactivity in 5-year-old children. In this randomized controlled trial, 45 children (28 female; 17 male; 5.2 ± 0.4 years) participated. Over 12 weeks, 15 children performed Hatha-yoga twice a week for 30 min, another 15 children performed generic physical education (PE) twice a week for 30 min, and 15 children performed no kind of physical activities, serving as control group (CG). Prior to ( T 0 ) and after 12 weeks ( T 1 ), all participants completed Visual Attention and Visuomotor Precision subtests of Neuropsychological Evaluation Battery and teachers evaluated children’s behavior of inattention and hyperactivity with the Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) Rating Scale-IV. At T 0 , no significant differences between groups appeared. Repeated measures analysis of variance revealed that following Bonferroni–Holm corrections yoga, in comparison to PE and CG, had a significant positive impact on the development on behavior of inattention and hyperactivity. Further, yoga has a significant positive impact on completion times in two visumotor precision tasks in comparison to PE. Finally, results indicate a significant positive effect of yoga on visual attention scores in comparison to CG. 12 weeks of Kindergarten-based yoga improves selected visual attention and visual-motor precision parameters and decreases behavior of inattention and hyperactivity in 5-year-old children. Consequently, yoga represents a sufficient and cost-benefit effective exercise which could enhance cognitive and behavioral factors relevant for learning and academic achievement among young children.

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of the time of day and partial sleep deprivation on cognitive performances (i.e., attention and reaction time [RT]) of the handball goalkeeper (GK). The protocol involved 12 healthy GK volunteer males (age: 18.5 ± 1.7 years, level of experience: 8.3 ± 2.4 years, height: 1.80 ± 5.8 cm; body-mass: 79 ± 4.2 kg). They performed three cognitive tasks, i.e. the RT test, the Stroop test, and the barrage test, respectively, to evaluate the RT, the selective attention (SA), and the constant attention (CA) following the two situations of partial sleep deprivation, i.e. in the beginning (SDB) and the end (SDE) of the night, and a reference night which is a full night of habitual sleep. Resting oral temperature was measured at the beginning of each test session. Each of the three experimental conditions was separated by a 72-h period. The analysis of variance revealed a significant sleep deprivation  test-time effect on the RT, the SA, and the CA. These variables decreased significantly from morning to afternoon for all three experimental conditions. It seems that the RT is more affected by SDE than SDB (p < 0.05; À41% vs. 49% after SDE and SDB, respectively); however, SA and CA are more affected by SDB than SDE (p < 0.05; 63% vs. 47% for SA and 39% vs. 29% for CA after SDB and SDE, respectively). Furthermore, the partial sleep deprivation causes a phase advance of the core temperature. In addition, cognitive performances are not in phase with the rhythm of core temperature for all three experimental conditions. In conclusion, the partial sleep deprivation negatively affect cognitive performances in the handball goalkeeper.

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