Acute coordinative exercise improves attentional performance in adolescents

Budde, Henning; Voelcker‐Rehage, Claudia; Pietrabyk-Kendziorra, Sascha; Ribeiro, Pedro; Tidow, Günter

doi:10.1016/j.neulet.2008.06.024

Cited by 490 publications

(514 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…10 Improvements after exercise have been reported in three studies of performance on speeded arithmetic tasks before and after physical activity, but these studies all lacked adequate control conditions for practice. [14][15][16] Improvements in concentration after physical exercise, assessed using visual search tasks, have been reported in three further studies, [17][18][19] but again these findings may be better explained by practice effects 19 or uncontrolled between-group variance. 17,18 We sought to address the lack of research in this area by conducting a pilot study of the effects of physical exercise on psychometric tests, which would bear ecological validity in relationship to classroom performance.…”

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confidence: 91%

Exercising attention within the classroom

Hill

Williams

Aucott

et al. 2010

Develop Med Child Neuro

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AIM To investigate whether increased physical exercise during the school day influenced subsequent cognitive performance in the classroom.METHOD A randomized, crossover-design trial (two weeks in duration) was conducted in six mainstream primary schools (1224 children aged 8-11y). No data on sex was available. Children received a teacher-directed, classroom-based programme of physical exercise, delivered approximately 30 minutes after lunch for 15 minutes during one week and no exercise programme during the other (order counterbalanced across participants). At the end of each school day, they completed one of five psychometric tests (paced serial addition, size ordering, listening span, digit-span backwards, and digit-symbol encoding), so that each test was delivered once after exercise and once after no exercise.RESULTS General linear modelling analysis demonstrated a significant interaction between intervention and counterbalance group (p<0.001), showing that exercise benefitted cognitive performance. Post-hoc analysis revealed that benefits occurred in participants who received the exercise intervention in the second but not the first week of the experiment and were also moderated by type of test and age group.INTERPRETATION Physical exercise benefits cognitive performance within the classroom. The degree of benefit depends on the context of testing and participants' characteristics. This has implications for the role that is attributed to physical exercise within the school curriculum.There have long been anecdotal reports of neuropsychological benefits arising from regular physical exercise, and these now receive support from a substantial body of empirical evidence. Recent reviews suggest that physical exercise can be useful in the treatment of depression, 1 can be used to maintain cognitive vitality in old age, 2 and can even reduce stereotypic and disruptive behaviours in children with autism, learning disorders, or behavioural disorders. 3 In children, associations between greater aerobic fitness and higher cognitive functioning have been reported. 4 Also, there is evidence of aerobic fitness level moderating aspects of academic performance 5 and children exhibiting increased 'ontask' classroom behaviour after brief exercise interventions. 6 Increases in the amount of curriculum time devoted to physical activity have also been reported to result in either no change or an improvement in students' academic achievement, 7 suggesting that increased exercise capably counteracts the negative impact of reduced academic instruction time, perhaps through improving cognition.Given these findings, recent initiatives to encourage increased childhood physical activity 8 may have important implications for mental as well as physical health. In adults executive functions such as working memory, goal-oriented processing, and inhibition are particularly improved by exercise interventions. 9,10 If this also applies in children, one might expect that the largest effects of exercise would be seen in individuals who have po...

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mentioning

confidence: 91%

Exercising attention within the classroom

Hill

Williams

Aucott

et al. 2010

Develop Med Child Neuro

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“…Studies have shown that physical activity (PA) is positively associated with academic performance [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. Individuals are more likely to have better mental focus and concentration when engaging in structured physical activity [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Individuals are more likely to have better mental focus and concentration when engaging in structured physical activity [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. However, children are sitting in the classroom for most of a school day [1][2][3]. A prolonged sedentary behavior not only does reduce children's attention to instructional tasks and their sustained focus on the task engagement, but also prevents children from meeting a recommended daily amount of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More recently, researchers have examined the effects of coordinated-bilateral exercises on attention and concentration in school-aged children [2,28]. Coordinated-bilateral exercises are specifically designed to use both sides of the body and more body parts simultaneously to perform bilateral movements while crossing the midline of the body [2,28].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Coordinated-bilateral exercises are specifically designed to use both sides of the body and more body parts simultaneously to perform bilateral movements while crossing the midline of the body [2,28]. Coordinated-bilateral movements engage both hemispheres of the brain and may facilitate cognitive development of cerebellum and prefrontal cortex [29,30].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Impact Of Coordinated-bilateral Physical Activities On Attention And Concentration In School-aged Children

Chen¹,

Harris²

2018

Medicine &Amp; Science in Sports &Amp; Exercise

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properly cited.Purpose. This study examined the effects of 4-week, daily 6-minute coordinated-bilateral physical activity (CBPA) breaks in classroom on attention and concentration in school-aged children. Methods. Participants (n=116) in fifth grade from two elementary schools were assigned to three groups: two intervention groups (n= 60) and one control group (n = 56). All three groups were preand post-tested with the d2 Test of Attention (d2 test). One intervention group (n = 31) took part in six minutes of daily classroombased coordinated-bilateral physical activity (CBPA) break for four weeks. Another intervention group (n = 29), the Fitbit Only (Fitbit-O), wore Fitbits per day during a school, five days per week for four weeks without CBPA breaks. A 2 × 3 ANOVA was conducted, followed by the post hoc comparisons. Results. The CBPA showed significant increases in processing speed ( 1 = 6.876, p = .010), focused attention ( 1 = 10.688, p = .002), concentration performance ( 1 = 26.46, p = .000), and attention span ( 1 = 14.090, p = .000) over the control, but not in accuracy (Error %). The CBPA showed significant improvement in concentration performance ( 1 = 24.162, p = .000) and attention span ( 1 = 6.891, p = .011), compared to the Fitbit-O. No significant changes in all five attention parameters were found between the Fitbit-O and the control. Conclusion. It was concluded that daily brief coordinated-bilateral activities can improve attention and concentration in fifth-grade students over the course of four weeks.

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