The effects of physical activity and physical fitness on children's achievement and cognitive outcomes: a meta-analysis
Fedewa AL, Ahn S · 2011
grade Dmeta-analysisindependentunreplicated
Sample
59 studies published 1947-2009
Population
Children; ages and designs not restricted
Design
Meta-analysis pooling correlational, quasi-experimental and experimental studies of physical activity and physical fitness against achievement and cognitive outcomes, with moderator analysis. No separation of randomized from observational estimates in the headline figure, no publication-bias correction, and a corpus reaching back to 1947.
Key findings
Reports a significant positive overall effect of physical activity on achievement and cognitive outcomes, with aerobic exercise the strongest moderator. Because the pool mixes cross-sectional fitness-achievement correlations with intervention studies, the headline estimate is uninterpretable under this database's grading rules — a meta-analysis inherits the confounding of what it pools, and roughly two-thirds of this pool is observational.
Genetic confound
High and unaddressed. Pooling fitness-achievement correlations from unrandomized samples reproduces passive gene-environment correlation at meta-analytic scale.
Effects
| Outcome | Metric | Value | Measure | Timing | Vs | Horizon | Class |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Achievement and cognitive outcomes, pooled | pooled effect size | significant and positive; aerobic exercise the largest moderator (magnitude not extracted — superseded) | mixed | mixed designs, 1947-2009 | unclear | unclear | domain-skill |