If you ever saw the Classroom Experiment with Dylan William, than you maybe already know the benefits of exercise for learning. A new follow-up study from a 2012 study shows 12 minutes of exercise can improve attention and reading comprehension in low-income adolescents, suggesting that schools serving low-income populations should work brief bouts of exercise into their daily schedules. The earlier study found that brief aerobic exercise improved selective visual attention among children, with low-income participants experiencing the biggest improvement.

The new study, published as part of the June volume of Frontiers in Psychology, compared low-income adolescents with their high-income peers. While both groups saw improvement in selective visual attention up to 45 minutes after exercising, the low-income group experienced a bigger jump. (Selective visual attention is the ability to remain visually focused on something despite distractions.) The low-income students also improved on tests of reading comprehension following the physical activity, but the high-income students did not.

Study author Michele Tine, assistant professor of education and principal investigator in the Poverty and Learning Lab at Dartmouth, suspects the two groups respond to exercise differently because they experience different levels of stress in life.

“Low-income individuals experience more stress than high-income individuals, and stress impacts the same physiological systems that acute aerobic exercise activates,” Tine said. “Physiological measures were beyond the scope of this study, but low-income participants did report experiencing more stress. Alternatively, it is possible that low-income individuals improved more simply because they had more room to improve.” Tine’s latest study shows the effect holds true for adolescents (participants this time ranged from 17 to 21). It also explores, for the first time, exercise’s effects on reading comprehension, an important research area because the gap between low- and high-income adolescents’ reading comprehension is growing steadily.

Abstract from the new study (free access):

There is a need for feasible and research-based interventions that target the cognitive performance and academic achievement of low-income adolescents. In response, this study utilized a randomized experimental design and assessed the selective visual attention (SVA) and reading comprehension abilities of low-income adolescents and, for comparison purposes, high-income adolescents after they engaged in 12-min of aerobic exercise. The results suggest that 12-min of aerobic exercise improved the SVA of low- and high-income adolescents and that the benefit lasted for 45-min for both groups. The SVA improvement among the low-income adolescents was particularly large. In fact, the SVA improvement among the low-income adolescents was substantial enough to eliminate a pre-existing income gap in SVA. The mean reading comprehension score of low-income adolescents who engaged in 12-min of aerobic exercise was higher than the mean reading comprehension score of low-income adolescents in the control group. However, there was no difference between the mean reading comprehension scores of the high-income adolescents who did and did not engage in 12-min of aerobic exercise. Based on the results, schools serving low-income adolescents should consider implementing brief sessions of aerobic exercise during the school day.

Abstract from the 2012 study (paywall):

Educational research suggests that lower-income children exhibit poor general executive functioning relative to their higher-income peers. Meanwhile, sports psychology research suggests that an acute bout of aerobic exercise improves executive functioning in children. Yet, it has never been determined if such exercise (1) specifically improves the selective attention aspect of executive functioning in children or (2) impacts lower-income children any differently than higher-income children. The current study utilised a randomised experimental design and found that a 12 min session of aerobic exercise improved the selective attention of both lower- and higher-income children. Moreover, lower-income children exhibited even greater improvement than higher-income children. As the income-achievement gap persists, it is important to explore feasible interventions that strengthen the cognitive processes that underlie academic performance.