Abstract
Learning in 6- to 7-year-old children is strongly influenced by three functions of attention: alertness, orienting, and executive control. These functions share a close relationship with body mobility, such as the posture adopted or a request to stay still during tasks. The aim of this study (ClinicalTrials.gov) was to analyze the influence of body posture (standing versus sitting) and the influence of these imposed postures compared to a free body mobility on attention functions in 6- to 7-year-old children. Twenty-one children (11 girls) with a mean age of 6.7±0.6years performed the Attention Network Test for Children in three-body mobility conditions: sitting still, standing still, and free to move. Three attentional scores were calculated which would separately reflect performance of alertness, orienting, and executive control. Overall, no difference in alertness performance was found between the three bodily mobility conditions. In addition, our results suggest a general poor orienting performance in children, whatever the body mobility condition, which might be related to their young age. Finally, children improved their executive control performance when they stood still, probably due to an improvement in arousal and mental state.
Highlights
The ages of 6 and 7 years old are crucial for fundamental learnings of children
We found a significant effect of body mobility condition on the global amount of movement, χ2(21,2) = 14.19, p = 0.001, W = 0.34
The aim of this study was to analyze the influence of body posture and the influence of these imposed postures compared to a free body mobility on alertness, orienting, and executive control in children aged 6 to 7 years
Summary
The ages of 6 and 7 years old are crucial for fundamental learnings of children. the end of kindergarten and the beginning of primary school is marked by the discoveries of reading, writing, and mathematics. Besides an important improvement in processing speed (Kail and Ferrer, 2007), efficient cognitive strategies may emerge in children aged 6 to 7, such as “sorting” or “active refreshing” strategies improving short-term and working memory performance (Schneider et al, 2004; Camos and Barrouillet, 2011) These children start to use a more proactive cognitive control (Lucenet and Blaye, 2014; Gonthier et al, 2019), by preparing in advance for foreseeable demands of tasks, which is known to require more mental efforts and to be more efficient for minimizing the effects of interfering information (Chevalier, 2015). The development literature has consistently shown that executive functions and attention components play an important part in children’s academic achievement
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