Physical exercise based on active breaks on cognitive function and mathematical competence in undergraduate students

Abstract

A review of the literature has demonstrated the impact of active breaks (AB) on students’ cognition and academic performance. Despite the evidence, undergraduate students seem to remain passive during the lessons as the teaching is mostly traditional and revolves around the teacher.To break with this tendency in the university context, we included physical activity (PA) breaks during lessons. This study aimed to observe the acute effect of AB on the students’ attention and mathematical competence. A total of 25 undergraduate students (Mage = 23.36, SD = 1.98) participated in this study and performed an intervention under two conditions: i) control condition and ii) active-break condition. Results revealed that after receiving an AB (15 minutes) of moderate intensity students’ attention was improved. More specifically, participants were faster at D2 and their math tasks results improved.