\u201cSchool teachers frequently claim that students lose attention and concentration with prolonged periods of academic instruction,\u201d said Maria Chiara Gallotta, first author of the study. \u201cThe key elements of learning, particularly important during development, are attention and concentration. Our study examined the relationship between exertion and the attention and concentration levels of schoolchildren<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n Researchers with the University of Rome \u201cForo Italico\u201d in Italy monitored attention and concentration in 138 children, ages 8-11. Students completed three 50-minute sessions \u2013 one with physical exertion only (PE), one with cognitive exertion only (CE), and one combining cognitive and physical exertion (CPE). Sessions were held at the same time during the week for three consecutive weeks.<\/p>\n Before and after the session, students took the d2 Test of attention to measure their processing speed, concentration performance and performance quality. The d2 Test is a letter cancellation test where students identify specific characters on a page. This particular test comprised 14 lines of 47 \u201cp\u201d and \u201cd\u201d characters. Students had 4.67 minutes to identify only letters \u201cd\u201d with double marks above or below the character.<\/p>\n \u201cThe d2 Test determined the student\u2019s capacity to focus on one stimulus, while suppressing awareness to competing distractors,\u201d said Gallotta. \u201cPerformance on this test reflects visual perceptual speed and concentrative capabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n While post-session scores improved for all students in all categories, the attention increase was significantly higher following cognitive exertion only and physical exertion only<\/strong>. Processing speed improved by nine percent in the CE group, 10 percent in the PE group and four percent in the CPE group. Concentration performance improved by 13 percent in the CE group, 10 percent in the PE group and two percent in the CPE group<\/strong>. Researchers suggest that the lower improvement of cognitive performance in the CPE group could be due to excessive stress induced by the mixed exertion<\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u201cOur findings suggest that varying types of exertion have different beneficial influences on school children\u2019s immediate cognitive performance,\u201d said Gallotta. \u201cWhile more research is needed, we believe this provides helpful justification for increasing physical activity opportunities in the academic setting.<\/p>\n \u201cPresently, we are investigating the effects of a traditional physical education lesson and of a coordinative physical education and, therefore, the effects of the physical load\u2014and the effects of mental load associated with physical load\u2014on the function of attention maintenance in primary school students.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the American College of Sports Medicine press release via HealthCanal: School administrators looking to restructure the academic schedule should consider the placement of physical education classes, according to research… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,9],"tags":[179,45,18,136,73,19,124],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2077"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2077"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2078,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2077\/revisions\/2078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/ExercisingBoy.jpg\" "\\"exercise\\"")
School administrators looking to restructure the academic schedule should consider the placement of physical education classes, according to research released today by the American College of Sports Medicine. The study, titled \u201cEffects of Varying Types of Exertion on Children\u2019s Attention Capacity,\u201d is published in the March issue of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise<\/em>\u00ae <\/sub>and finds that adding physical activity into the school day helps children concentrate on their academic work<\/strong>.<\/p>\n