The Facilitative Effect of Acute Rhythmic Exercise on Reading Comprehension of Junior High Students

With tightening school budgets and continued emphasis on core subject standardized testing, physical education often takes a backseat to academic areas that school administrators deem more important. Much time is spent using improvement strategies in the classroom that do not involve exercise. Two hundred eighty-five sixth to eighth grade students were measured on their ability to correctly answer questions from an age-appropriate reading passage to see if exercise is an effective intervention. Half of the students were randomly selected to conduct an 8-in. step test for 10 min at a pace of one complete step up and down every 2 s. All participants were allowed 10 min to read a four-paragraph passage and to answer 10 multiple-choice questions. Participants were enrolled in a middle school physical education class and were measured on weight, body fat, and blood pressure. English Language Arts scaled scores (range of 100 to 500) taken from the Integrated Louisiana Educational Assessment Program norm-referenced tests were used to verify equality on reading ability of the participants. Findings revealed that students who exercised immediately prior to reading the passage scored statistically higher (M = 6.4) than the control group (M = 4.3). An ANCOVA was computed to control for the differing ELA scores (control = 320, experimental = 338), and a significant difference was observed between the control and experimental groups, F(1, 281) = 83.1, p < .001, on reading scores. Weight, body fat, and blood pressure had no effect on reading scores. The results indicate that short-duration exercise is one method that schools should consider in attempts to improve reading scores.