Short breaks at school: effects of a physical activity and a mindfulness intervention on children's attention, reading comprehension, and self-esteem

Mindfulness enhances cognitive functioning: a meta-analysis of 111 randomized controlled trials

BACKGROUND

Currently no comprehensive meta-analysis of MBI efficacy on global and unique cognitive subdomains exist.

METHOD

Examined the effects of MBIs on global cognition and 15 cognitive subdomains. Inclusion criteria: meditation naïve participants; randomized controlled trial; outcome included one objective or subjective cognitive functioning measure; primary focus was teaching mindfulness skills. Exclusion criteria: inadequate data; one-session ; control condition contained any MBI component. Robust variance estimation and moderator analyses controlling for presence of treatment fidelity were conducted.

RESULTS

One-hundred-and-eleven RCTs (n = 9,538) met eligibility criteria. MBIs had small-to-moderate significant effects on global cognition, executive attention, working memory accuracy, inhibition accuracy, shifting accuracy, sustained attention, and subjective cognitive functioning (vs. waitlist/no-treatment, g = 0.257-0.643; vs. active controls, g = 0.192-0.394). MBIs did not impact executive functioning (EF) latency indices, verbal fluency, processing speed, episodic memory, and cognitive error. Treatment effects were stronger for those with elevated psychiatric symptoms vs. healthy controls, and medical samples, studies with complete-case (vs. intention-to-treat) analysis, face-to-face (vs. self-guided) delivery, and non-standard (vs. standard MBI).

CONCLUSION

MBIs consistently yielded small-to-moderate yet practically meaningful effect sizes on global cognition and six cognitive subdomains that captured accuracy vs. latency-based indices of EF and sustained accuracy.

Student arousal, engagement, and emotion relative to Physical Education periods in school

BACKGROUND

Exercise has transient effects on cognition and mood, however the impact of Physical Education (PE) on cognitive and affective processes across the school day has not been examined.

METHOD

This study used wearables and questionnaires to track student arousal, engagement, and emotion across school days/periods following PE. Skin conductance, heart rate, heart rate variability, and self-reported engagement, arousal, and valence were analyzed for 23 students (age 15-17 years) on days with and without PE.

RESULTS

Sympathetic arousal was significantly higher for two hours following PE and there were stronger decreases in arousal across other classes relative to days without PE. On days with PE, engagement decreased, whereas valence increased from morning to afternoon.

CONCLUSION

These findings highlight the importance of considering acute effects of PE on learning across the entire school day, and demonstrates the feasibility of wearables to clarify how the timing of PE could positively or negatively affect self-regulation and learning.