Mediators of the association between physical activity and executive functions in primary school children
Bibliographic record
Abstract
There is growing interest in identifying the mechanisms underpinning the effects of physical activity on executive functions (e.g. inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility) in children. Our study examined cardiorespiratory fitness, muscular fitness, and motor competence as potential mediators of this relationship. The study used baseline data from the Learning to Lead (L2L) cluster randomised controlled trial. In total, 675 children (7–11 years, 49.5% girls) completed measures of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), cardiorespiratory fitness, muscular fitness, motor competence, and executive functions. Structural equation modelling was used to examine the potential mediating roles of cardiorespiratory fitness, muscular fitness, and motor competence in the cross-sectional association between MVPA and executive functions. Cardiorespiratory fitness (β = 0.06, SE = 0.021, p = 0.004) partially mediated the association between MVPA and cognitive flexibility. Muscular fitness was a significant mediator of the association between MVPA and both inhibitory control (β = 0.03, SE = 0.014, p = 0.027) and cognitive flexibility (β = 0.06, SE = 0.021, p = 0.005). No significant mediated effects were found for motor competence. Our findings suggest cardiorespiratory and muscular fitness (but not motor competence) mediate the association between physical activity and executive functions in children.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
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 | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".