The Benefits of Acute Exercise for Children’s Cognition Are Associated with Trait Anxiety
Bibliographic record
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Children's anxiety is associated with decreased cognitive performance. One well-established behavioral intervention to transiently improve cognitive performance in children is acute aerobic exercise (AAE). Thus far, however, it is unclear whether the benefits of AAE on cognition vary based on individual differences in children's anxiety level. Therefore, we investigated whether trait anxiety levels mediate the effects of AAE on cognitive outcomes in preadolescent children. METHODS: Ninety-five preadolescent children (9 to 11 yr, 41 females) underwent two experimental interventions in a random, crossover, and counterbalanced design: an exercise protocol (20 min of walking at 65% to 75% of HRpeak) and a nonexercise control (seated rest). Behavioral indices of cognitive performance (accuracy, reaction times, response time (RT) variability) were assessed before and after each intervention using a modified flanker task. The effects of each intervention on cognitive performance were calculated as pre- to postintervention differences (effect scores). These scores were first correlated with children's personal characteristics: anxiety (STAIC), sex, age, body mass index, intelligence quotient, and aerobic fitness. Significant correlations guided subsequent hierarchical regression models, which specifically tested for associations between the effects scores and anxiety levels while controlling for remaining relevant covariates. RESULTS: Regression analysis revealed that anxiety was a significant predictor of the effects that AAE and rest had on cognitive performance. Specifically, higher anxiety scores were associated with greater exercise-induced cognitive benefits (increased accuracy, decreased RT variability; all P < 0.05) and greater rest-induced cognitive impairments (decreased accuracy, increased RT variability; all P < 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that children reporting higher trait anxiety might experience greater cognitive benefits from a single bout of AAE.
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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 | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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".