ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Movement Science
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1660305
This article is part of the Research TopicEfficacy, Neuromechanisms, and Human-AI Interface Integration: Neural-Adaptation Training Paradigms for Sports and RehabilitationView all 6 articles
Effects of Gymnastics Exercises on Executive Function in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Aged 6 to 9 Years: A Pilot Study of a Randomized Controlled Trial
Provisionally accepted- 1University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China
- 2Chengdu Sport University, Chengdu, China
- 3Police Academy of the Armed Police, Chengdu, China
- 4Chengdu Chenghua District Special Education Schoo, Chengdu, China
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Objective: To explore the improvement effects of 12-week gymnastics exercises on executive function (including inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility) in children aged 6 to 9 years with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and to provide a basis for motor interventions in ASD children. Study Design: A randomized controlled trial (RCT) design was adopted. Methods: Twenty-four ASD children aged 6-9 years from a special school in Chenghua District, Chengdu, were selected and randomly divided into an experimental group (12 cases) and a control group (12 cases). The experimental group received gymnastics exercises (covering movements such as walking, running, crawling, tumbling, and jumping) 3 times a week for 40 minutes each time, while the control group maintained routine daily activities. Before and after the intervention, the Day-Night Stroop task, picture working memory task, and card sorting task were used to assess inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility, respectively. Independent samples t-tests and paired samples t-tests were performed using SPSS 29.0 to analyze intergroup and intragroup differences. Results: After the intervention, the scores of inhibitory control and working memory in the experimental group were significantly higher than those before the intervention (both P<0.01), and the score of cognitive flexibility was also significantly improved (P<0.05). The control group showed a significant difference in working memory (P<0.05), while there were no statistically significant differences in inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility before and after the intervention (P>0.05). Intergroup comparison showed that the improvement in each dimension of executive function in the experimental group was better than that in the control group, but there was no significant difference (P>0.05), which may be related to the short intervention time. Conclusion: 12-week gymnastics exercises can effectively improve the executive function (inhibitory control, working memory, cognitive flexibility) of 6-9-year-old children with ASD, and can be used as an effective motor intervention for ASD children.
Keywords: Children with autism spectrum disorder, Executive Function, gymnastics exercises, Inhibitory Control, working memory, cognitive flexibility
Received: 05 Jul 2025; Accepted: 01 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Deng, Zhu, Luo, Zeng, Jiang and Yu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Chenliang Deng, dengclkd@163.com
Qiaoyan Yu, yqycainv@163.com
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