Acute Effect of Cognitive Compromise during Physical Exercise on Self-Regulation in Early Childhood Education

Changes in Perceived Mental Load and Motor Performance during Practice-to-Learn and Practice-to-Maintain in Basketball

BACKGROUND

Attentional resource allocation during sports practice is associated with the players' perceived mental load. However, few ecological studies address this problem by considering the players' characteristics (e.g., practice experience, skill and cognition). Therefore, this study aimed to analyse the dose-response effect of two different types of practice, each with different learning objectives, on mental load and motor performance by using a linear mixed model analysis.

METHOD

Forty-four university students (age 20.36 ± 3.13 years) participated in this study. Two sessions were conducted, one based on a standard rules 1 × 1 basketball situation ("practice to maintain") and one with motor, temporal and spatial restrictions in 1 × 1 tasks ("practice to learn").

RESULTS

"Practice to learn" produced a higher perceived mental load (NASA-TLX scale) and a worse performance than "practice to maintain", but was moderated by experience and inhibition (p = 0.001). The same happens in the most demanding restriction (i.e., temporal, p < 0.0001).

CONCLUSION

The results showed that increasing the difficulty of 1 × 1 situations through restrictions harmed the player's performance and increased their perceived mental load. These effects were moderated by previous basketball experience and the player's inhibition capacity, so the difficulty adjustment should be based on the athletes themselves.

The effect of different combinations of physical activity and natural environment videos on children's attention levels between class breaks

BACKGROUND

Physical activity intervention and watching natural environment videos have been proven to improve young children's attention levels. However, evidence comparing the improvement effects of different combinations of the two activities has rarely been reported. By comparing the differences in the improvement effects of four combinations of physical activities and watching natural environment videos on young children's attention levels, this study can enrich the evidence in this research field and also provide a reference for arranging effective intervention methods for children's attention recovery between classes.

METHOD

A total of 152 children aged 4 to 6 years were recruited and randomly divided into four intervention groups: (1) physical activity intervention first and thereafter watching a natural environment video group (activity + video group), (2) watching a natural environment video first and thereafter the physical activity intervention group (video + activity group), (3) physical activity-based group, and (4) natural environment video-based group. Physical activity involved 4 min of moderate-intensity basic physical fitness combination training. The subjects wore the Pico Neo pioneer version of the VR glasses all-in-one machine to watch a natural environment video. Thereafter, population sociological variables and daily physical activity levels were investigated. Auditory and visual sustained attention tests were performed before and after intervention in each group.

RESULT

The auditory attention post-test scores of the four groups showed an improvement trend compared with the pretest scores. In particular, the activity + video group (F = 10.828; ɳp2 = 0.226; p = 0.002) and natural environment video-based group (F = 9.452; ɳp2 = 0.203; p = 0.004) have the best improvement effect. For visual attention, only the activity + video group showed a significant improvement trend (F = 4.287; ɳp2 = 0.104; p = 0.045), while the other three groups showed a downward trend in scores.

CONCLUSIONS

Among the different intervention combinations, the physical activity intervention first and watching natural environment videos thereafter group has the best effect on improving children's attention during recess. Physical activity interventions at the end of recess adversely affect young children's visual attention levels at the beginning of the class. Therefore, this study recommends that children should not engage in physical activity interventions in the second half of the class break. Lastly, the current research recommends presenting the content of physical activity interventions first and further improving their attention thereafter by watching natural environment videos.