Targeting the mind and body: recommendations for future research to improve children’s executive functions

Abstract

Children’s executive functions (EFs)--the cognitive processing underlying controlled, goal-oriented cognition and behavior--have been shown to be important predictors of future physical, mental, and social wellbeing. Thus, developmental researchers are keen to uncover effective methods to improve children’s EFs. While much of the focus in the past decade has been on direct cognitive and behavioral interventions to improve children’s EFs, another line of research--typically undertaken in medical schools and in departments of kinesiology--has examined physical health interventions as a way to indirectly improve children’s EFs. This commentary suggests that there is promising evidence that physical activity-based interventions to increase children’s fitness also enhance children’s EFs. There is ample need for additional studies to firmly establish this effect, and to determine the degree to which intervention effects transfer from laboratory EF assessments to ‘real-world’ functioning.  Finally, there is intriguing evidence from animal models that interventions that combine physical and cognitive training have robust positive impacts on brain health. To translate these findings to humans, there is a need for collaborations between developmental psychologists and physical health experts in order to design interventions that simultaneously target children’s physical and cognitive health.