Children’s academic test scores might improve if they boost their brain power with some high-intensity exercise before picking up a pen, according to a new pilot study.
Children had significantly higher test scores after spending nine minutes performing high-knee walking, jumping jacks, lunges, and squats, researchers report in the journal Psychology of Sport & Exercise.
Lead researcher Eric Drollette, an assistant professor of kinesiology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, stated: “Physical education and physical activity are good for our rising generation. It’s good for mental health. It’s good for brain health. It’s good for academic achievement.”
How Exercise Improves Performance
These better test results might arise because children who exercised were more capable of focusing and shrugging off mistakes, researchers said.
Study Design
In the study, researchers had 25 children between ages 9 and 12 take an academic test after performing high-intensity exercises or taking a seated rest break.
Drollette explained in a news release: “In the classroom, you have teachers that say, ‘Let’s take a movement break to get you focused again.’ We know that’s the case anecdotally in the classroom, but we hadn’t put the science to it.”
The high-intensity exercises were specifically designed for classrooms, with children performing each activity for 30 seconds followed by 30 seconds of rest.
Drollette noted: “With earlier studies, we did 20 minutes of exercise on a treadmill – equipment not found in the classroom. A lot of studies have followed up like that. In this study, we wanted to replicate what could possibly be done in a classroom.”
Key Findings
Children scored significantly better on a standardized test measuring verbal comprehension following high-intensity interval exercise, compared to when they rested, results show.
Brain readings revealed that children who performed the interval exercises also had lower levels of error-related negativity (ERN), a type of electrical brain activity that occurs when a person makes a mistake.
High levels of ERN are associated with mental distraction because they show that people have become fixated on an error, reducing their focus and performance, researchers said.
Drollette explained: “With interval exercise, we actually see this decrease in this error-related response. This can be beneficial because it means that while a person made an error, the error itself is less salient, thus they are able to effectively respond to the error or mistake in a mentally healthy way.”
Future Research
Researchers plan to build on these findings by investigating how this error response might be connected to a child’s overall mental health.
Senior researcher Jennifer Etnier, a professor of kinesiology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, stated in a news release: “This research provides us with valuable insights into the potential for a single short period of exercise to benefit children’s cognitive performance.”
Etnier added: “These findings may have important implications for teachers who are incorporating movement breaks into their classrooms and who might then see benefits to their students’ academic performance.”
This research provides scientific support for classroom movement breaks, suggesting that brief, high-intensity exercise sessions could be a simple and effective tool for improving students’ academic performance and cognitive function.
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