The Influence of Motor Competence on Broader Aspects of Health: A Systematic Review of the Longitudinal Associations Between Motor Competence and Cognitive and Social-Emotional Outcomes

Children and adolescents, baseline ages spanning pre-school to 18; 49 studies, sample sizes 10 to 33,717 (51% with n >= 100)

PROSPERO-registered systematic review of 49 studies (15 observational/longitudinal, 34 experimental) on whether motor competence predicts or transfers to academic achievement, executive function and social-emotional outcomes; 47,571 titles screened. Same proportion-of-supportive-analyses grading as Barnett 2022 (0-33% "0" none; 34-59% "?" indeterminate; >=60% "+/-", "++/--" when four or more studies agree; <3 studies = "I" insufficient). Two scope limits matter for how thin the evidence actually is: only SEVEN observational studies assessed MC against academic performance / (pre)literacy / intellectual functioning, and only TWO assessed social-emotional outcomes — the rest of the 15 sit on executive-function outcomes. Twenty-three different motor-competence assessments were used across the 49 studies, and studies running more than eight analyses on one path were dropped from the synthesis altogether. Only individual confounders (age, sex, BMI) are adjusted for anywhere in the corpus.

Far transfer from motor competence to cognition is not established, and the paper's strongest single sentence is that "no studies investigated the causal relationship of motor competence with pre-literacy skills and academic performance outcomes." At the domain level ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE is rated "0" — NO ASSOCIATION, not indeterminate — working memory is the only "?" indeterminate rating, and every other cognitive and social-emotional domain (attention, composite executive functions, cognitive functioning, psychosocial function, social behaviour) is rated "I" INSUFFICIENT on fewer than three studies. At pre-school and pre-adolescent ages composite MC, locomotor skills and balance had a "negligible or NEGATIVE relationship with academic performance" once adjusted for sex, age and BMI. Domain-specific patterns are incoherent: within the academic-performance domain, catching, aiming and balance are all 0%, running speed/agility 3.3%, composite MC 28.6% — but LEAPING is 66.7% (16/24), above the paper's own positive threshold, off one study. Only 35% of studies met six or more of the seven bias criteria. The one signal with some experimental support is narrow: cognitively-enriched physical activity affecting working memory, with MC as a moderator — an aptitude x treatment interaction, not a general cognitive lift — and the experimental corpus is dominated by studies showing MC and cognition improving in PARALLEL under non-causal analysis, which the authors are explicit does not establish direction.

Not modelled, and the review is longitudinal/observational by design so selection and passive gene-environment correlation are unaddressed throughout. The only confounders adjusted for anywhere in the corpus are age, sex and BMI. MC and cognitive ability are both heritable and correlate genetically, so longitudinal MC->cognition prediction is open to pleiotropic confounding; the review never raises heritability, twin designs or family structure.

Heterogeneity too high to identify construct-specific relationships; consistent with the null-to-tiny causal estimates in Ciria 2023 and Fit to Study, which are independent of this author group. Caution: Barnett 2022, usually cited as this review's companion, shares five authors with it (Barnett, Pesce, Valentini, Getchell, Robinson), so the two reviews corroborate each other only in the weak sense of one consortium covering two outcome domains.