Searching for cognitively optimal challenge point in physical activity for children with typical and atypical motor development

Statement of problemGrowing evidence testifies that different types of physical activity (PA) interventions promote cognitive development, but the specific impact of the cognitive demands inherent in PA still remains underconsidered. This study investigated whether (1) increasing the cognitive demands of PA positively impacts children's executive function and (2) this ‘enrichment’ also matches the ability/skill level of children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD).MethodsTwo hundred and fifty children aged 5–10 years participated in different physical education interventions, lasting six months, with or without special focus on cognitively demanding PA. Before and after the intervention, children's executive function was tested with the attention and planning subscales of the Cognitive Assessment System and their motor developmental level classified as typical, borderline, or DCD according to their performance evaluated by the Movement Assessment Battery for Children.ResultsAmong indices of executive function, those of Attention showed a differential effect of PA type as a function of children's motor developmental level: typically developing children gained greatest attentional benefit from PA with additional cognitive demands, while children with coordinative problems/impairment from the PA program without cognitive enrichment. Changes from DCD to borderline or normal developmental status did not differ in frequency as a function of intervention type.ConclusionsResults showed that cognitively more or less challenging PA programs are differently efficacious for promoting attention development and highlight the need to find and continuously reset the degree of task complexity in PA to match the optimal challenge point of normal and special children populations.