A study carried out by the integrated public school Castro de Baxoi de Miñor conclude that increasing physical exercise among students improves their concentration, reading ability, perceived happiness and self-esteem.
The study has been prepared from the analysis of 33 students from the center with ages between 10 and 12 years. During three months, one group had increased physical activity during the week -with three half-hour sessions- to check if there were changes with respect to their peers who continued with the usual exercise. The work has allowed to conclude that the improvement of their general health derived from physical exercise is also joined by aspects of a cognitive nature such as the ability to pay attention or reading skills.
The Physical Education teacher who led the study, Manuel Losada, underlines that teachers at school always demand “greater attention” from students, so increasing exercise can become a tool to achieve this. In his opinion, physical education is “pigeonholed” in functions such as “general improvement” of the personal, although it also influences “cognitive aspects”, such as attention, which later has repercussions in other areas of learning.
Happier
the rise of physical activity also reinforces self-esteem at an especially difficult age, when they are about to enter adolescence. “The results – the report points out – invite us to think that this improvement in physical condition leads to an improvement in the well-being of the subjects and their self-esteem and self-image, a very important aspect at these ages”.
In addition, these students felt happier with respect to their peers. “We observed that the more the physical exercise carried out increases, the greater the happiness perceived by the subjects of the experimental group,” the study points out.
Research has also established a clear relationship between deep sleep and ability to concentrate.
The study has had the collaboration of Latent, the comprehensive service of high capacities emerged from a group of psychologists and researchers from the University of Santiago. These specialists provided the psychological tests and supervised the analysis of the extracted data.
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