Effects of two years of physically active lessons on cognitive indicators in children: A pilot study

The study was evaluated the effect of physically active lessons (PAL) on cognitive performance (ED) during two years of follow-up in children. Four classes were divided into two intervention classes (IG: n = 34) and two control classes (CG: n = 27). Five evaluations were performed; before the intervention (M1), after three (M2) and nine (M3) months in the first year, and fourteen (M4) and eighteen (M5) months in the second year. The intervention was based on PAL integrated with the curricular components, which stimulated the children to stand or move in the classroom. ED was evaluated using three computerized test for response inhibition, selective attention and cognitive flexibility. The children in the IG presented improved ED in the execution of all task along the two years follow-up, in both correct answers and time reactions, with exception of correct answers of visual search. For IG, in most of the task, the mean differences confidence interval of 95% did not include the 0 on the two last moments of evaluation, and in all cases, the mean differences of the IG between M1 versus M5 were significant different with high values of effect size (cohen -d > 1). PAL promote modest improvements in diverse cognitive functions in children.