Division of Training and Movement Sciences, Research Focus Cognition Sciences, University of Potsdam, Am Neuen Palais 10, Building 12, 14469, Potsdam, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2021 Sep 2;11(1):17566. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-97000-4.
Children's physical fitness development and related moderating effects of age and sex are well documented, especially boys' and girls' divergence during puberty. The situation might be different during prepuberty. As girls mature approximately two years earlier than boys, we tested a possible convergence of performance with five tests representing four components of physical fitness in a large sample of 108,295 eight-year old third-graders. Within this single prepubertal year of life and irrespective of the test, performance increased linearly with chronological age, and boys outperformed girls to a larger extent in tests requiring muscle mass for successful performance. Tests differed in the magnitude of age effects (gains), but there was no evidence for an interaction between age and sex. Moreover, "physical fitness" of schools correlated at r = 0.48 with their age effect which might imply that "fit schools" promote larger gains; expected secular trends from 2011 to 2019 were replicated.
儿童的体能发展及其相关的年龄和性别调节效应已有充分记录，尤其是青春期男孩和女孩的差异。在青春期前，情况可能有所不同。由于女孩的成熟年龄比男孩早大约两年，我们在一个由 108295 名 8 岁三年级学生组成的大样本中，用五项代表体能四个组成部分的测试，测试了在这一单一的青春期前年龄段，是否存在表现出趋同的可能性。在这一年内，无论测试如何，表现都随着实际年龄呈线性增长，而且在需要肌肉质量才能成功完成的测试中，男孩的表现优于女孩。测试在年龄效应（收益）的幅度上存在差异，但没有证据表明年龄和性别之间存在相互作用。此外，学校的“体能”与它们的年龄效应相关，r=0.48，这可能意味着“健康的学校”促进了更大的收益；2011 年至 2019 年的预期长期趋势得到了复制。
