Department of Psychology, University of Basel, Missionsstrasse 62, 4055, Basel, Switzerland.
Department of Educational and Health Psychology, University of Education Schwäbisch Gmünd, Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany.
Psychol Res. 2023 Jul;87(5):1401-1416. doi: 10.1007/s00426-022-01749-w. Epub 2022 Oct 20.
Movement is essential for everyday life and closely related to cognitive skills. The aim of the current research was to investigate whether different aspects of physical activity, i.e., aerobic fitness and motor skills, contribute above and beyond each other to the variance in children's executive functioning. Children aged 8-13 years (N = 129, 58 females, M = 10.7 years, SD = 1.6 years) participated in the current cross-sectional study. Aerobic fitness was assessed by the Progressive Aerobic Cardiovascular Endurance Run (PACER). Motor skills were assessed using the standardized Movement Assessment Battery for Children 2nd edition (M-ABC-2), including fine motor skills, balance skills, and object control. Components of executive functions (inhibition, switching, updating) were assessed using the following tasks: an animal Stroop task, a local-global task, and a 2n-back task. Hierarchical regressions were conducted to analyze the relative importance of aerobic fitness and motor skills for children's executive functions. Results indicated that aerobic fitness and fine motor skills were significantly related to switching and updating, whereas relations to inhibition were non-significant. Furthermore, it was found that fine motor skills explained additional variance above aerobic fitness in switching and updating whereas aerobic fitness did not add additional variance above fine motor skills in switching and updating. Balance and object control skills were not related to the three core executive functions. Results support the notion that aerobic fitness and fine motor skills are differently related to executive functions and highlight the importance of considering multiple components of constructs in future research.
运动对于日常生活至关重要，与认知技能密切相关。本研究旨在探讨不同的身体活动方面，即有氧健身和运动技能，是否对儿童执行功能的差异有额外的贡献。年龄在 8-13 岁的儿童（N=129，女性 58 名，M=10.7 岁，SD=1.6 岁）参与了本次横断面研究。有氧健身通过渐进式有氧心血管耐力跑（PACER）进行评估。运动技能使用标准化的儿童运动评估电池 2 版（M-ABC-2）进行评估，包括精细运动技能、平衡技能和物体控制。使用以下任务评估执行功能的组成部分（抑制、转换、更新）：动物斯特鲁普任务、局部-整体任务和 2n 回任务。进行了层次回归分析，以分析有氧健身和运动技能对儿童执行功能的相对重要性。结果表明，有氧健身和精细运动技能与转换和更新显著相关，而与抑制的关系不显著。此外，还发现精细运动技能在转换和更新方面解释了有氧健身之外的额外差异，而有氧健身在转换和更新方面并没有增加精细运动技能之外的额外差异。平衡和物体控制技能与三个核心执行功能没有关系。结果支持有氧健身和精细运动技能与执行功能有不同关系的观点，并强调在未来研究中考虑多个结构组成部分的重要性。
