According to a recent study and reported by WebMD, regular daily exercise appears to improve children's attention and multi-tasking skills.
Elementary school-age students who participated in an after-school program with plenty of physical activity showed greater improvements in several areas of so-called "executive function" than similar students who did not participate.
Executive function, according to the article in WebMD, refers to a range of mental or "cognitive" skills that include memory, focus, attention and the ability to switch back and forth between tasks.
Lead researcher Charles Hillman said that students who had the highest attendance in the program saw the biggest gains in mental skills.
"I think these are the hardest evidence we have available that time spent in physical activities, which would include physical education and recess, not only doesn't detract from academic goals, but it might enhance academic performance," Hillman, a professor of kinesiology and community health at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, told WebMD.
The findings were published online Sept. 29 and in the October print issue of the journal Pediatrics.
The researchers randomly assigned 221 children, aged 7 to 9, to either the after-school program or a wait-list for the program. The after-school program occurred for nearly all of the school year (150 days). Over two hours, physical activity alternated with rest periods, resulting in about 70 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise every weekday, Hillman said.
The children took tests to measure their "inhibition" and their "cognitive flexibility," which is basically their ability to switch between different tasks successfully, such as reading something and then answering questions about that reading, Hillman said.
Inhibition involves two types of thinking skills, Hillman explained: the ability to ignore distractions in the environment to focus on something specific, and the ability to stop a well-learned response quickly when necessary.