The Effects of Physical Activity on Impulse Control, Attention, Decision-Making and Motor Functions in Students with High and Low Impulsivity

Mohamad Hosein Ghahramani¹, Mehdi Sohrabi¹*, Alireza Saberi kakhki¹ and Mohamd Ali Besharat²

¹Motor Behavior Department, Ferdowsi university of Mashhad, Mashhad Iran.

²Clinical Psychology Department, Tehran University. Tehran. Iran.

Corresponding Author Email: sohrabi@um.ac.ir

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.13005/bbra/2318

ABSTRACT: Impulsivity as a symptom cuts across a number of psychiatric disorders and results have shown that it as an antipode of certain components of executive functions and consistently associated with lower grades and academic achievement. The objective of this study was to explore the effects of physical activity on impulse control, attention, decision-making and motor functions in school students with high and low impulsivity. The subjects were forty elementary school students that represented the top and bottom 33% of the distribution of impulsivity scores as high and low impulsivity in the Impulsivity Rating Scale (IRS) and were peer in IQ. They were randomly assigned in trainig and wait-list control groups in both levels of impulsivity (10 subjects in each group, for a total of 40 subjects). Before and after a 54-week training or control period, impuls control, attention, decision-making and motor functions were assessed by Go/no-go test, Continue Performance Test (CPT), The Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) and Linklon - Oseresky Motor Development Scale (LOMDS), respectively. The results showed that impulsivity scores decreased in high and low impulsivity groups compared to control groups. Also, attention, decision-making and motor functions were improved in both levels of impulsivity compared with their control groups. But comparative analysis between high and low impulsivity groups showed that effect of physical activity with low impulsivity group was significantly more than with high impulsivity group  (p<0.05). on the basis of this results, it can be concluded that physical activity program reduce the impulsivity and furthermore, it improves attention, decision-making and motor functions in students with different levels of impulsivity, specialy in low impulsivty.

KEYWORDS: attention function; decision-making; motor impulsivity; Physical activity

[ HTML Full Text]