Mediating Effects of Fitness and Motor Competence on Children’s Executive Functions: Findings from the Learning to Lead Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial
Bibliographic record
Abstract
PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to examine the mediating effects of cardiorespiratory and muscular fitness (the fitness hypothesis) and motor competence (the skill acquisition hypothesis) on executive functions among children participating in the Learning to Lead fundamental movement skills intervention. METHODS: We conducted a two-arm cluster randomized controlled trial in 20 primary schools in New South Wales, Australia ( N = 946). Ten schools were allocated to the intervention condition and ten to the wait-list control condition. Children in the intervention condition participated in 12 × 30-min peer-led fundamental movement skill sessions over a 10-wk period. Cardiorespiratory fitness, muscular fitness, motor competence, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility were assessed at baseline and postintervention. The preregistered mediation analysis was conducted at the individual level within a structural equation modeling framework, using cluster-robust standard errors (SEs), to account for nonindependence of observations at the classroom level. RESULTS: None of the mediation effects were statistically significant. The intervention significantly improved inhibition ( β = 0.125, SE = 0.054, P = 0.021) but not cognitive flexibility ( β = 0.013, SE = 0.068, P = 0.845). The intervention improved cardiorespiratory fitness ( β = 0.14, SE = 0.051, P = 0.007) but not muscular fitness ( β = -0.02, SE = 0.062, P = 0.707) or motor competence ( β = 0.04, SE = 0.076, P = 0.568). Muscular fitness was associated with inhibition ( β = 0.13, SE = 0.035, P < 0.001), and motor competence was associated with inhibition ( β = 0.08, SE = 0.034, P = 0.017) and cognitive flexibility ( β = 0.12, SE = 0.030, P < 0.001) at postintervention. CONCLUSIONS: Changes in fitness and motor competence did not mediate the effect of the intervention on children's executive functions. However, the significant associations between mediators and executive functions offer partial support for both the "fitness" and "skill acquisition" hypotheses, suggesting their potential importance for children's cognitive development.
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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 | 0.018 | 0.024 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 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".