The Effect of Comprehensive School Physical Activity Program on Cognitive and Motor Development in 9-11-Year-Old Males with Obesity

Obesity, as a complex multifactorial disease, is a global epidemic caused by several factors, including genetics, poor nutrition, inadequate mobility, and psychological characteristics. Obese children have a lower level of basic motor skills than their healthy peers. There is a link between obesity and a decrease in the volume of gray matter in the cerebral cortex and poor cognitive function. Obesity is associated with hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, cardiovascular disease, and certain tumors. Given the critical role of physical activity in developing cognitive, bio–social, and motor abilities, it seems necessary to provide opportunities for play and physical activity for obese children. Furthermore, designing and using exercise programs for these children is a significant challenge faced by researchers, educators, and sports teachers. The current study aimed to explore the effect of the Comprehensive School Physical Activity Program (CSPAP) on cognitive and motor development in 9–11–year–old males with obesity.

This was a quasi–experimental study with pretest–posttest and a control group design. Thirty 9–11–year–old boys with obesity from Babol City, Iran, in 2018–2019 were selected by the convenience sampling method and randomly divided into the control and experimental groups. The inclusion criteria included a calendar age range of 9 to 11 years, having a Body Mass Index (BMI) above 32.5, no hyperactivity syndrome, no attention issues according to the Child Symptoms Inventory (CSI–4), and no acute neurological, skeletal, and muscular complications; the atrial system was diagnosed by a physician and physiotherapist. The exclusion criterion was absence from 5 training sessions. The Test of Gross Motor Development–Third Edition (Ulrich, 2016) was used to evaluate motor skills at pretest and posttest. Moreover, to assess cognitive skills, the London Tower Test (Shaliss, 1982) was used. The experimental group participated in the Comprehensive school physical activity program for 8 weeks and 5 days a week (40 90–minute sessions). The control group performed their daily activities during this time. Descriptive statistics (mean & standard deviation) and inferential statistics, including Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) and Independent Samples t–test, were performed to analyze the obtained data in SPSS at the significance level of 0.05.

The ANCOVA results indicated that after adjusting the pretest scores on the posttest scores, a significant difference was observed between the experimental and control groups in motor development (p<0.001) and its subtests, including motor mobility skills (p<0.001) and object control motor skills (p<0.001) as well as cognitive development (p<0.001). Eta–square for the cognitive development variable was measured as 0.780, indicating that 78% of the changes in cognitive development scores were due to the CSPAP. Furthermore, the Eta–square for the motor development was equal to 0.905, revealing that 90.5% of the changes in motor development scores were due to the implementation of CSPAP.

According to collected results, in obese boys aged 9 to 11 years, a significant improvement could significantly improve cognitive and motor development by the CSPAP.