Abstract:

Cognitive functions are a group of essential brain activities enabling individuals to correctly elaborate, process, and respond to external stimuli. Among these functions, cognitive processing speed (CPS), i.e., how rapidly a person is able to process external information and respond to it properly, is essential in youth’s learning processes. Physical activity (PA) is a potential strategy for enhancing CPS in youth, as underlined by previous literature. However, a large portion of kids are exposed to PA only through physical education (PE). In South Tirol, middle-school PE is usually presented as a 2-hour block (PE2) once a week or as two blocks of one hour per week (PE1). The purpose of this study is to compare the acute effect of PE and non-PE classes on CPS; to examine the impact of 2-hour blocks vs. 1-hour blocks on CPS; and to assess whether the changes in CPS between PE and non-PE classes are affected by the duration of the PE session.
The sample was composed by 188 students (41% girls; average age = 12.45 ± 0.72 years; NPE1 = 81; NPE2 = 107) from two middle schools in South Tirol, Italy. For CPS measurement, all participants took the Zahlen Verbindungs Test (ZVT; number connection test) four times: before and after one non-PE class carried out on a different day but at the same time as the PE class, and before and after a PE session. ZVT is a scientifically validated paper-based test composed by numbers from 1 to 90 written and randomly distributed on a A4 paper. Participants are asked to draw lines as fast as possible so to connect successive numbers starting from the number “1”. The test includes four different types of patterns, so that participants were presented with a different one at each measurement session, in order to avoid any learning effect. Results from independent sample and paired sample t tests showed a significant acute increase in CPS after non-PE and PE classes (p < .001). However, no differences were found in such increase when contrasting the results from non-PE and PE (p = .871). When analyzing based on the duration of the PE block, our findings were similar: while CPS increased significantly after both non-PE and PE, the effect was similar in both situations (PE1: p = .168; PE2: p = .374). Additionally, the comparison between PE1 and PE2 showed no differences in the changes in CPS after one vs. two hours of PE (p = .675).

Our findings are in line with previous literature underlining the role of PA in the improvement of CPS, at the same time as they suggest that PE classes provide equal benefits to CPS as regular non-PE classes. Nonetheless, several external factors may have partly influenced these results, among them the specific contents taught, or differences in engagement time and intensity of PA during PE. In the future, it would be interesting to examine whether active classrooms, i.e., implementing short PA bouts during regular non-PE classes, hence combining the two conditions, may provide with larger benefits for youth’s cognitive functions compared to PE or non-PE sessions individually.

Keywords:

Cognitive processing speed, physical education, middle school, curriculum.