Mathematical anxiety (MA) is a specific phobia, when faced with
situations involving numbers or solving mathematical problems. Evidence has
demonstrated the beneficial effects of physical exercise in reducing general anxiety and
increasing cognitive performance in executive functions and mathematics in children.
At the moment, we know that there are still no studies on the possible cognitive benefits
and mathematical performance of exercise in children with AM. General Objective: To
investigate the acute effect of High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) and Static
Stretching (AE) on Visuospatial Working Memory (MTV), Mathematical Arithmetic
Performance (MDT) and Heart Rate Variability (HRV) in school children from 9 to 12
years with math anxiety. Methodological procedures: The Elementary Mathematical
Anxiety Scale (MARS-E) was used to classify children into high and low MA. Then,
through a randomized crossover trial, different parameters: MTV, TDM and HRV were
monitored before and after a HIIT or AE session, with 64 schoolchildren (33 female),
from the public school system in the city of Belém- SHOVEL. Data were analyzed by
estimation statistics for confidence interval, effect size and significance (p ≤ 0.05).
Results: After HIIT, there was an improvement in MTV performance in the group of
children with low AM (d= 0.426, p ≤ 0.05) and improvement in MDT for children with
low AM (d= 0.217, p ≤ 0.05) and with high AM (d= 0.194, p ≤ 0.05). A similar result in
the improvement of MDD was observed after performing an AE session in the group
with low AM (d= 0.19, p ≤ 0.05) and with high AM (d= 0.209, p ≤ 0.05). The nonlinear HRV results showed that both children with low MA (d= 0.574, p ≤ 0.05) and
high MA (d= 0.673, p ≤ 0.01) showed an increase in SampEn in the post-EA condition
during the realization of TDM. Conclusion: HIIT may improve executive function for
less anxious children, but not AE. Performing HIIT and AE exercises can provide
conditions for children to improve math performance. The AE proved to be an
important candidate to increase the complexity of HRV, contributing to the
improvement of mathematical performance. The findings of this research point to
promising paths to the need to include physical exercise in the daily school life of
children with mathematical anxiety, in order to promote improvements in both mental
health, cognitive level and school performance.
|
