Efectos agudos de diferentes cargas ejecutivas durante los descansos activos sobre las funciones ejecutivas en escolares: un estudio piloto

Recent evidence suggests that the cognitive benefits of physical exercise in childhood depend not only on movement but also on the cognitive demands embedded in the task. This study examined the acute effect of three active breaks with different executive load on inhibitory control and working memory in primary school pupils. A randomized controlled pilot block pretest-posttest design was used with 40 participants distributed into four groups: aerobic, inhibition, working memory, and sedentary control. Inhibitory control was assessed with “Simon says” and working memory with the Digit Span subtest of the WISC-IV. Nonparametric analyses showed significant improvements in inhibitory control after the inhibition and working memory conditions, whereas the aerobic group did not reach statistical significance and the sedentary control group showed no significant changes. After Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons, no condition reached significance versus the sedentary control group; the numerically larger differences were observed in working memory for the working-memory and aerobic groups and should be interpreted as descriptive, exploratory observations. These results suggest that the cognitive architecture of active breaks may influence inhibitory control, although the findings should be considered exploratory due to the small sample size.