Effects of Commercial Exergames and Conventional Exercises on Improving Executive Functions in Children and Adolescents: Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Exergames are promising exercise tools for improving health. To the best of our knowledge, no systematic review has compared the effects of commercial exergames and conventional exercises on improving executive functions (EFs) in children and adolescents. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to investigate the effects of commercial exergames and conventional exercises on improving EFs in children and adolescents. METHODS: Following the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines, 5 randomized controlled trial (RCT) databases (PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, PsycINFO, and SPORTDiscus) were searched from their inception to July 7, 2022, to identify relevant RCTs. The Cochrane Collaboration tool was used to evaluate the risk of bias for each study. GRADE (Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation) was used to evaluate the overall quality of evidence. RESULTS: In total, 8 RCTs including 435 children and adolescents were included in the analysis. Commercial exergames had no significant benefit on overall EFs compared to conventional exercises (Hedges g=1.464, 95% CI -0.352 to 3.280; P=.06). For core EFs, there was no evidence to suggest that commercial exergames are more beneficial for improving cognitive flexibility (g=0.906, 95% CI -0.274 to 2.086; P=.13), inhibitory control (g=1.323, 95% CI -0.398 to 3.044; P=.13), or working memory (g=2.420, 95% CI -1.199 to 6.038; P=.19) than conventional exercises. We rated the evidence for overall EFs, cognitive flexibility, inhibitory control, and working memory as being of very low quality due to inconsistency (large heterogeneity) and imprecision (low number of people). Additionally, no effects of the intervention were observed in the acute and chronic groups. CONCLUSIONS: We do not have strong evidence to support the benefit of commercial exergaming on EFs because we did not observe a Hedges g close to 0 with tight CIs. Further research is needed to confirm this hypothesis. TRIAL REGISTRATION: PROSPERO CRD42022324111; https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=324111.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.020 | 0.052 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.019 | 0.046 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.006 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".