ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Sport Psychology
This article is part of the Research TopicPhysical Education, Health and Education Innovation-Vol IIIView all 39 articles
The relationship between physical exercise and learning engagement among Chinese college students: the chain mediating roles of cognitive flexibility and psychological resilience
Provisionally accepted
- 1College of Physical Education, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China
- 2College of Physical Education, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China
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Objective: This study tested a sequential mediation model examining whether cognitive flexibility and psychological resilience explain the relationship between physical exercise and learning engagement among Chinese college students. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted with 670 Chinese college student. Participants completed the Physical Activity Rating Scale, Learning Engagement Scale, Cognitive Flexibility Inventory, and Psychological Resilience Scale. Data were analyzed using SPSS 27.0 and the PROCESS macro (Version 4.2) for serial mediation analysis with 5,000 bootstrap samples. Results: Regression analyses revealed that physical exercise positively predicted cognitive flexibility (β = 0.507, p < 0.001) and psychological resilience (β = 0.381, p < .001). Cognitive flexibility further predicted psychological resilience (β = 0.336, p < .001) and learning engagement (β = 0.370, p < .001). Crucially, the mediation analysis confirmed a significant direct effect of exercise on learning engagement (β=0.143, 95% CI= [0.068, 0.218]). Three specific indirect effects were significant: through cognitive flexibility (β = 0.188, 95% CI [0.141, 0.234]), through psychological resilience (β = 0.086, 95% CI [0.050, 0.126]), and serially through both (β = 0.038, 95% CI [0.020, 0.059]). Conclusion: This cross-sectional study reveals a significant positive association between physical exercise and learning engagement among Chinese college students. The findings support a model in which cognitive flexibility and psychological resilience act as sequential mediators in this relationship. These results suggest that fostering psychological resources alongside physical activity may be a relevant consideration for promoting student engagement in learning. Future longitudinal and intervention studies are needed to establish causality.
Keywords: cognitive flexibility, college students, Learning engagement, physical exercise, PsychologicalResilience
Received: 24 Oct 2025; Accepted: 02 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Zhang, Rao, Liu, Han and Zheng. 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: Lifang Zheng
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