Executive function
Does doing The Daily Mile for longer boost pupils' minds?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Children who had done The Daily Mile for more than a few months were slightly fitter, but they did not think better or feel better than children who did not take part.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cross-sectional — One-time measurement comparing pupils grouped by teacher-reported Daily Mile participation (none, 2 months or less, longer), adjusted for age, sex and area deprivation.
- N
- N=6908 · 6908 pupils included in analysis (474 shorter-term, 1004 longer-term, 5430 non-participants) out of 7337 who gave any data; fitness analyses had fewer pupils.
- Population
- UK primary-school pupils, mean age 10.2 years, in classes registered for the BBC Terrific Scientific programme
- Outcome
- Inhibition (stop-signal), visual-spatial and verbal working memory, affect and alertness ratings, and 20-m shuttle-run fitness
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Key findings
Longer-term participants ran further on the shuttle test than both non-participants and shorter-term participants, though the effects were small. There were no meaningful differences in inhibition, verbal working memory or wellbeing, and longer-term participants actually did very slightly worse on the visual-spatial working-memory task. Fitness did not predict working memory or wellbeing overall; only in the shorter-term group did fitter pupils show somewhat better visual-spatial working memory.
Methodology
Teachers across the UK registered their classes in a BBC citizen-science project and reported whether and for how long pupils had done The Daily Mile, a roughly 15-minute daily run or walk. Pupils completed computer tasks of inhibition, visual-spatial and verbal working memory, rated how good and how awake they felt, and did a bleep (shuttle-run) fitness test. The researchers compared longer-term, shorter-term and non-participants, adjusting for age, sex and area deprivation, and tested whether fitness predicted cognition or wellbeing.
Limitations
Because pupils were not randomly assigned and were measured only once, the groups may differ in other ways; schools may have adopted the programme precisely because pupils were less fit. The exact duration of participation was unknown, habitual physical activity outside school was not measured, and some data were collected just after the summer holidays. Teachers and pupils ran the fitness test themselves, so its measurement fidelity is uncertain, and most schools were in less deprived areas.
How this study connects
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