AUTHOR=Rosenbaum Joëlle , Hascoët Jean-Michel , Hamon Isabelle , Petel Arthur , Caudron Sébastien , Ceyte Hadrien 

TITLE=Body Mobility and Attention Networks in 6- to 7-Year-Old Children

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=12

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.743504

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2021.743504

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=<p>Learning in 6- to 7-year-old children is strongly influenced by three functions of attention: alertness, orienting, and executive control. These functions share a close relationship with body mobility, such as the posture adopted or a request to stay still during tasks. The aim of this study (<ext-link xlink:href="https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03125447?term=NCT+03125447&amp;draw=2&amp;rank=1" ext-link-type="uri" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">ClinicalTrials.gov</ext-link>) was to analyze the influence of body posture (standing versus sitting) and the influence of these imposed postures compared to a free body mobility on attention functions in 6- to 7-year-old children. Twenty-one children (11 girls) with a mean age of 6.7±0.6years performed the Attention Network Test for Children in three-body mobility conditions: sitting still, standing still, and free to move. Three attentional scores were calculated which would separately reflect performance of alertness, orienting, and executive control. Overall, no difference in alertness performance was found between the three bodily mobility conditions. In addition, our results suggest a general poor orienting performance in children, whatever the body mobility condition, which might be related to their young age. Finally, children improved their executive control performance when they stood still, probably due to an improvement in arousal and mental state.</p>