Table 2.

Effect Sizes of Exergaming on Executive Function

Exergame Study	Executive Function Assessment
	Observer Report	Backward Span	Color Trails	DCCS	D-KEFS	Flanker	Simon	Stroop
Study 1 (Anderson-Hanley, Tureck, & Schneiderman, 2011); Exp 1	$\eta \mathrm{p}2=.47$	$\eta \mathrm{p}2=.20$	${\text{ns}}_{\text{TT}}$	/	/	/	/	$\eta \mathrm{p}2={.19}_{\text{TT}}$
Study 1 (Anderson-Hanley, Tureck, & Schneiderman, 2011); Exp 2	$\eta \mathrm{p}2=.24$	$\eta \mathrm{p}2=.22$	/	/	/	/	/	/
Study 2 (Best, 2012)	/	/	/	/	/	$\eta \mathrm{p}={.10}_{\text{RT}}$	/	/
Study 3 (Benzing et al., 2016)	/	/	/	/	$\eta \mathrm{p}2=.10$	/	/	/
Study 4 (Benzing & Schmidt, 2019)	${}^{\mathrm{b}}\eta \mathrm{p}2=.32$	ns	/	/	/	${}^{\mathrm{b}}\eta \mathrm{p}2={.30}_{\text{RT}}$	${}^{\mathrm{b}}\eta \mathrm{p}2={.26}_{\text{RT}}$	/
Study 5 (Eng et al., 2020)	$\eta \mathrm{p}2=.26$	/	/	/	/	$\eta \mathrm{p}2={.18}_{\text{ACC}}$	/	$\eta \mathrm{p}2={.27}_{\text{ACC}}$
Study 6 (Flynn et al., 2014)	/	/	/	/	${}^{\mathrm{c}}\eta \mathrm{p}2=.20$	/	/	/
Study 7 (Flynn & Richert, 2018)	/	/	/	/	/	$\eta \mathrm{p}2={.04}_{\text{ACC}}$ $\eta \mathrm{p}2={.05}_{\text{RT}}$	/	/
Study 8. (Gao et al., 2019)	/	/	/	$\eta \mathrm{p}2=.19$	/	/	/	/
Study 9 (Staiano et al., 2012)	/	/	$\eta \mathrm{p}2={.15}_{{\text{CS}}^{{}^{\mathrm{a}}}}$	/	$\eta \mathrm{p}2={.15}_{{\text{CS}}^{{}^{\mathrm{a}}}}$	/	/	/
Study 10 (Xiong et al., 2019)	/	/	/	$\eta \mathrm{p}2=.17$	/	/	/	/

Note: $\eta \mathbf{p}2$ = partial eta-squared: indicates statistically significant changes in executive function from exergaming with Alpha set at 0.05 for all statistical tests. ns = not significant: indicates no statistically significant changes in executive function from exergaming. / = did not administer the assessment in the study.

DCCS = Dimensional Change Card Sort Task (Zelazo, 2006)

D-KEFS = Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System (Delis, Kaplan, & Kramer, 2001)

RT = reaction time. ACC = accuracy. TT = total time to complete task, did not reach significance compared with gains made in the control condition.

^aCS = composite D-FEKS Color Trails + D-KEFS Design Fluency scores, individual subtest scores not reported.

^bEffect sizes in Study 4 were computed by converting Cohen’s $d$ to $\eta \mathrm{p}2$ using the sample size ($n=28$) and Cohen’s $d$ (Jin, 2020) reported in the original papers: Simon Task Cohen’s $d=0.58$, Flanker Task Cohen’s $d=0.65$, Conners-3 Cohen’s $d=0.68$.

^cEffect size in Study 6 was determined computing Cohen’s $d$ (0.493), calculated using Pretest and Posttest mean executive function scores, the standard deviation of the means, and the correlation between the scores reported in the original paper (M_pre = 12.73; SD = 11; M_post = 19.33; SD = 14.92; $r=50$), and then converted to $\eta \mathrm{p}2$ with the sample size ($n=70$). All equations are reported in manuscript text.