Effects of Acute Aerobic Exercise on Executive Function in Children With and Without Learning Disability: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Abstract

This study examined the effects of acute aerobic exercise on sustained attention and discriminatory ability of children with and without learning disabilities (LD). Fifty-one children with LD and 49 typically developing children were randomly assigned to exercise or control groups. The participants in the exercise groups performed a 30-min session of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise, whereas the control groups watched a running/exercise-related video. Neuropsychological tasks, the Daueraufmerksamkeit sustained attention test, and the determination tests were assessed before and after each treatment. Exercise significantly benefited performance in sustained attention and discriminatory ability, particularly in higher accuracy rate and shorter reaction time. In addition, the LD exercise group demonstrated greater improvement than the typically developing exercise group. The findings suggest that the acute aerobic exercise influenced the sustained attention and the discriminatory function in children with LD by enhancing regulation of mental states and allocation of attentional resources.

Effectiveness of perceptual‐motor exercises and physical activity on the cognitive, motor, and academic skills of children with learning disorders: A systematic review

“…Further exclusion in the last round included studies that (1) the full text was not written in English ( N = 3); (2) did not meet the participants' criteria ( N = 2); (3) did not meet the intervention's criteria ( N = 2); and (4) had incomplete data ( N = 3). Finally, 10 eligible trials were included in the review (Cofini et al, 2018; Deng, 2017; Emami Kashfi et al, 2019; Flaugnacco et al, 2015; Huang et al, 2020; Kouhbanani et al, 2020; Masoudi et al, 2016; Mohammadi et al, 2009; Reynolds et al, 2003; Westendorp et al, 2014) (Table 1).…”

“…Due to PM exercises' characteristics as an intervention, participants, and therapists were not blinded in most of the studies. According to the ROB2 assessment, six studies were rated as “High risk” (Emami Kashfi et al, 2019; Huang et al, 2020; Kouhbanani et al, 2020; Masoudi et al, 2016; Mohammadi et al, 2009; Reynolds et al, 2003) and one was judged as “Unclear risk” (Flaugnacco et al, 2015). Three studies assessed by ROBINS‐I and RoB2 for cluster‐randomization had a “moderate risk of bias” (Cofini et al, 2018; Westendorp et al, 2014) and a “serious risk of bias” (Deng, 2017), hence were not akin to the randomized controlled trials.…”

“…The studies were published between 2003 and 2022. Four studies were conducted in Iran (Emami Kashfi et al, 2019; Kouhbanani et al, 2020; Masoudi et al, 2016; Mohammadi et al, 2009), two in Italy (Cofini et al, 2018; Flaugnacco et al, 2015), and one in Taiwan (Huang et al, 2020), China (Deng, 2017), the Netherlands (Westendorp et al, 2014), and the United Kingdom (Reynolds et al, 2003) each. The total number of participants in the intervention and control groups was 251 and 232, respectively.…”

“…The mean age of participants ranged from 6.12 to 12.4 years. All studies had a control group, one study had two intervention groups (Emami Kashfi et al, 2019), and one study had two intervention (TD and SLD) and two control (TD and SLD) groups (Huang et al, 2020). Five studies had follow‐up data (Emami Kashfi et al, 2019; Flaugnacco et al, 2015; Kouhbanani et al, 2020; Reynolds et al, 2003; Westendorp et al, 2014), and one published 6‐month follow‐up results in a separate paper (Reynolds et al, 2003) (Reynolds & Nicolson, 2007).…”

Dose-Related Effects of Endurance, Strength and Coordination Training on Executive Functions in School-Aged Children: A Systematic Review

“…Studies in which physical exertion is measured and additionally linked to executive functions could provide more information about this suspected mediation effect. Like the long-term PA interventions, the short-term effects can only be meaningful if the experimental manipulation (e.g., monitoring the real-time heart rate or subjective effort) was successful [ 19 ]. To our knowledge, no systematic review has yet considered a manipulation check in assessing the effects of single bouts of physical exertion on executive function.…”