Research published in Frontiers in Psychology looks at the effects of a nine-week program of daily exercise on children’s cognitive performance, aerobic fitness, and physical activity levels.
Vera van den Berg and colleagues conducted a cluster randomized controlled trial in 21 classes in eight Dutch primary schools. A total of 512 children aged 9 to 12 participated. The intervention consisted of daily classroom-based exercise breaks of moderate to vigorous intensity. Each break lasted approximately ten minutes, and children were asked to mimic dance moves from a video. Children in the control group watched 10- to 15-minute information and educational videos related to the body, exercise, and sports.
Before and after the intervention, children were asked to perform four cognitive tasks to measure their cognitive performance in selective attention, inhibition, and memory retrieval. Children’s aerobic fitness was measured with a shuttle run test, and accelerometers were used to measure physical activity throughout the day. The results were:
- At the end of the nine weeks, the exercise intervention had no effect on children’s cognitive performance or aerobic fitness.
- Children in the intervention group spent 2.9 minutes more of the school day involved in moderate to vigorous physical activity compared to the children in the control group.
The study concludes that daily exercise breaks can be implemented in the classroom in order to promote physical activity during school time, but doesn’t improve children’s cognitive performance.
Source (Open Access): Van den Berg, V., Saliasi, E., de Groot, R. H. M., Chinapaw, M. J. M., & Singh, A. S. (2019). Improving cognitive performance of 9–12 years old children: Just dance? A randomized controlled trial. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 174. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00174