Research On The Influence Of Football Activities On Children's Executive Function

Executive function is a kind of advanced cognitive ability that people can use it to coordinate and control their own thought,emotion and behavior.Executive function is core of human cognition and emotion,and it plays an important role in people's physical and mental health.If executive function develops well,it will not only help people to plan,learn,solve problems effectively,and enhance their ability to adapt the society,constrain their own behaviors,comply with social norms,but also predict achievements of future,health and wealth.When executive function is not mature or lacking,it is usually associated with the pathogenesis of ADHD,depression,autism and many other disease.Sports,as a method to promote the improvement of individual performance,has been more and more confirmed by relevant research.However,most of the current studies involve school-aged children,adolescents,college students and other special people who are lagging behind on executive function,and there are few reports about sports and improvement of preschool children.The executive function has emerged at early age of 1-2,and early childhood and school age are important periods of development.Based on this,the study attempts to use soccer activity to explore 10 weeks of moderate intensity effects on preschool children's executive function,and compare the differences between soccer activity and routine physical education of kindergarten on executive function in order to make a theoretical and practical contribution to the field of sports and executive function,infants sports and preschool children's physical and mental health.The study selected 74 preschool children in a Xi'an kindergarten,including 44 boys and 30 girls.After the consent of the parents and the actual situation of the kindergarten,these preschool children were divided into soccer activity group,where had 26 preschool children;routine physical education group,where had 24 preschool children;control group,where had 24 preschool children.The experimental groups did exercise intervention at the same time and the same place,while the control group watched the preschool children's video.The whole exercise program lasted 10 weeks,3 times a week,40 minutes a day,and the heart rate was kept at a moderate intensity.The inhibitory control,working memory and cognitive flexibility of three groups of preschool children were measured by knocking-stamp task,backward digital task and adapted seeing-listening task.The measurement time was the at first week,5 weeks after intervention and one week after intervention.We used the one-way analysis of variance and repeated measurement of variance analysis to analyze the collected data.The results of the study are as follows:First,for the soccer activity group,after 10 weeks exercise intervention,the development of inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility of preschool children was better than intervention after 5 weeks,and 5 weeks' outcome was better than the level before the intervention.The developmental level of working memory was that exercise intervention after 10 weeks was better than the level of exercise intervention after 5 weeks,however there were no significant differences between the exercise intervention after 5 weeks and the level before exercise intervention.Second,for the routine physical education group,after 10 weeks exercise intervention,the development of inhibitory control and working memory of preschool children was better than intervention after 5 weeks,however there were no significant differences between the exercise intervention after 5 weeks and the level before exercise intervention.The developmental level of cognitive flexibility was that there were no significant differences between intervention after 10 weeks and intervention after 5 weeks,and the level after 5 weeks was better than the level before exercise intervention.Third,in the pretest and middle test,there were no significant differences among these three groups about executive function;in the post test,the inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility of soccer activity group's preschool children were better than the routine physical education group,but there were no significant differences between the soccer activity group and routine physical education group about working memory.The executive function of soccer activity was better than the control group.The conclusions of this study are as follows:First,as time goes on,both soccer activity and routine physical education can promote the preschool children's executive function.Second,the improvement tendency of executive function of soccer activity is better than the routine physical education.That is because the movement techniques and rules of soccer is more complicated than routine physical education,which needs preschool children's more cognitive involvement.Besides that,the cooperative characteristics of soccer are more obvious than that of routine physical education,which is more conductive to the improvement of the peer interaction of preschool children,and furthermore,it has a positive influence on the development of preschool children.Third,There are differences on the three sub functions of executive function between soccer activity and routine physical education.In the inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility,the soccer activity is better than routine physical education,and as for working memory,there are no significant differences between them.That is because preschool children become accustomed and automated to technology and rules,which reduces the load of working memory,and weakens the stimulation of working memory ability,and the effect is reduced.