A Trial of EF-Oriented Physical Activities for Preschoolers in China

For a long time, the aim of physical activities (PA) for preschoolers in China is to cultivate basic motor skills and improve health and fitness. With the development of neuroscience, it is widely accepted that environment can... [ view full abstract ]

For a long time, the aim of physical activities (PA) for preschoolers in China is to cultivate basic motor skills and improve health and fitness. With the development of neuroscience, it is widely accepted that environment can shape the brain structure and functions. A number of studies claimed that PA can have impact on people’s executive functions (EF) that contain continuous attention, reaction inhibition, cognitive flexibility and memory. However, most existing literature in this area is about physiological mechanism of the executive functions and the impact of PA in general. So far, there is little publication about the effect of EF-oriented PA on children’s EF. This study is to explore the possibility of designing EF-oriented PA to develop preschoolers’ EF.

It is hypothesized that EF-oriented PA can promote preschooler’s executive functions more effectively than traditional PA. An EF-oriented PA program was designed first and then tried in 5 kindergartens in China for 14 weeks. Each kindergarten had one trial group and one control group. In total there were some 220 subjects. Flanker, DCCS, Go-no-go and WMT tests were carried out for both trial and control groups before and after the trial.

The result shows that significant difference is seen between the trial and the control groups in cognitive flexibility, but no significant difference in continuous attention, reaction inhibition and memory between the two groups. And the mean value of trial groups is larger than the control groups. This suggests that the EF-oriented physical activities program has significant positive impact on cognitive flexibility. More studies need to be done in this field.