The Impact of Acute Bouts of Two Types of Physical Activity on Cognition in Elementary School-Aged Children

Purpose: To determine the effect of acute bouts of two types of physical activity on cognition in elementary school-aged children. Methods: Subjects were 21 6-11 year old children (8.8 ± 1.6 years) who were free of any cognitive or learning disabilities or delays. Children participated in three randomly ordered conditions. The control condition included watching 20 minutes of TV while seated, the cycle condition included 20 minutes of cycling on a pediatric cycle ergometer at 60% of estimated heart rate maximum, and the play condition include 20 minutes of semistructured free play activity. After each condition, the children completed 2 trials of the modified Flanker test using the Psychology Experiment Building Language (PEBL) software.. Repeated measures ANOVAs were used to compare interactions between tests type (congruent, incongruent) and condition (TV, cycle, play) for Flanker test accuracy and reaction time. Paired samples t-tests were also used to look for differences in accuracy and reaction time between the congruent and incongruent trials as well as among conditions. Results: Significant differences were found between the congruent and incongruent trials for all conditions for both accuracy and reaction time (p<0.001). However, no significant differences were found between conditions for both accuracy (p= 0.20) and reaction time (p= 0.56), though scores for both active conditions were higher than the control condition. No mean differences were found between the congruent and incongruent trials for each condition as well. Conclusions: It appears that the effects of cycling and play may be similar to those seen in the literature with acute bouts of structured cycling or treadmill walking at a moderate intensity. However, the results were not significant. More research is needed, along with a larger sample size, to make conclusions about semistructured play and its effect on cognition in children.