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Cash-strapped school districts that eliminate physical education to focus on classroom learning might be doing students a disservice, suggests a study showing better test performance by fit kids than their unfit peers.
Forty-eight 9- and 10-year olds living in Illinois performed memory tests consisting of briefly seeing four-letter place names on a map, and subsequently being asked to match the location's name with its position on the map. On the first day of the study, this testing occurred in two ways: "study only," which depended solely on memory of the initial map view during the subsequent test, and "test study," during which location names briefly appeared near the margins of the iPad screen the children were working on.
The day before this map test, the researchers had measured the children's aerobic fitness via a standard treadmill test. For the first round of testing, there was no difference in test performance between the fitter and less fit children.
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That changed on follow-up tests conducted the day after the first map learning session. On that day, the children were to recall as many place names as possible seen the previous day. The recall tests took two forms: "free recall," in which the children were presented with a blank map and asked to complete it as best they could, and "cued recall," in which the place names appeared near the margin of the screen and the children were to put them in their proper location.
The fitter children significantly outperformed the less-fit children on the recall tests. That was especially the case with the place names learned during the "study only" portion on the first day, which was the harder of the two initial learning situations.
"These data might be interpreted to suggest that higher levels of fitness have their greatest impact in the most challenging situations," the researchers wrote. "[I]t would appear that fitness might primarily exert its beneficial influence at initial encoding of novel material to a greater extent than during retrieval."
The researchers wrote that their findings are consistent with research showing that the hippocampus, the part of the brain thought to be responsible for forming new memories, benefits from fitness and exercise.
The researchers also wrote that their findings could have practical implications.
"Reducing or eliminating physical education in schools, as is often done in tight financial times, may not be the best way to ensure educational success among our young people," they concluded.
The research was published in the journal PLoS One.
Scott is a veteran running, fitness, and health journalist who has held senior editorial positions at Runner’s World and Running Times. Much of his writing translates sport science research and elite best practices into practical guidance for everyday athletes. He is the author or coauthor of several running books, including Running Is My Therapy, Advanced Marathoning, and Meb for Mortals. Scott has also written about running for Slate, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, and other members of the sedentary media. His lifetime running odometer is past 110,000 miles, but he’s as much in love as ever.
