Effects of chronic physical activity on cognition across the lifespan: a systematic meta-review of randomized controlled trials and realist synthesis of contextualized mechanisms

Giving Ideas Some Legs or Legs Some Ideas? Children’s Motor Creativity Is Enhanced by Physical Activity Enrichment: Direct and Mediated Paths

“…Cognitive functions that contribute to motion with e-motion may better reflect the motivational salience of the motor creativity context ( Rudd et al, 2020 ) and are inherent in a recent overarching model of how enriched PA may enhance the creative potential ( Richard et al, 2021 ). The need to address the salience of the context and the physical, cognitive, emotional and social facets of PA enrichment is emerging in movement sciences also in the first systematic attempt to identify contextualized mechanisms acting in the physical activity-cognition relation ( Pesce et al, 2021b ). These intriguing convergences may inspire future research that empirically develops at the intersection of ecological approaches to creativity, cognitive and movement sciences.…”

Parents’ and Early Childhood Educators’ Perceptions on Movement and Learning Program Implementation

“…This program involved videos with cognitively engaging physical activity for preschool children. Its design considered that movement-based experiences adjusted in digital environments can provoke children's exploration and imagination, and in turn instigate their cognitive development [31]. It was also important to combine high levels of relevance and integration between the movements and cognitive tasks (i.e., motor and cognitive tasks are related in terms of content and occurred simultaneously) to elicit paramount learning gains [22].…”

Dar 'algo de alma' a la investigación sobre actividad física y cognición: enfoque en niños y adolescentes

“…It is determined by several variables such as PA intensity, duration, and cognitive engagement, which should consequently be considered together to avoid overload. Thus, the take-home message is the recommendation to expose children and adolescents to quality PA that elicits challenging levels of physical effort and cognitive (especially executive function) engagement (García-Hermoso et al, 2021;Pesce et al, 2021), finely tuning physical, cognitive and emotional demands to the developmental level and expertise to reach and maintain an optimal challenge point. This is, for example, a peculiar feature of virtual reality PA games , which seem useful to boost cognition also in children and adolescents with special needs (e.g., cancer survivors: Benzing et al, 2020), both acutely and chronically (e.g., Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Benzing et al, , 2019.…”

“…However, the storytelling does not end here. Using the wide-angle lens of a meta-review, we can detect a disproportional growth of reviews, compared to primary studies at the base of the pyramid, with partially different foci and inconsistent conclusions (Pesce et al, 2021). The first position stand of the American College of Sports Medicine concerning PA effects on children's cognition reported positive conclusions (Donnelly et al, 2016) that were disconfirmed by the inconsistent outcomes of successive reviews, one of which conducted by a wide international expert panel (Singh et al, 2019;Wassenaar et al, 2020).…”

“…This realistic approach allows not only exploring what works, that is, which physical, cognitive, emotional or social features of PA may act as an enrichment that benefits cognitive development. It also allows understanding for whom it works from an individual difference perspective and under which circumstances of delivery and setting it works, since causal mechanisms in complex interventions as PA programs may be triggered in one but not in another context (Pesce et al, 2018(Pesce et al, , 2021. Thus, we call for the promotion of an integrative and multidimensional perspective.…”