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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2012 Jun 1.
Published in final edited form as: Prev Med. 2011 Jan 31;52(Suppl 1):S65–S69. doi: 10.1016/j.ypmed.2011.01.020

Fitness, fatness, cognition, behavior, and academic achievement among overweight children: Do cross-sectional associations correspond to exercise trial outcomes?

Catherine L Davis a,*, Stephanie Cooper b
PMCID: PMC3164323  NIHMSID: NIHMS311642  PMID: 21281668

Abstract

Background

This study examined associations of fitness and fatness with cognitive processes, academic achievement, and behavior, independent of demographic factors, at the baseline of an exercise trial.

Methods

Overweight, sedentary but otherwise healthy 7–11 year olds (N=170) participated in a study of health, cognition and achievement in the Augusta, GA area from 2003–2006. Children underwent evaluations of fatness and fitness, psychological assessments of cognition and academic achievement, and behavior ratings by parents and teachers. Partial correlations examined associations of fitness and fatness with cognitive and achievement scores and behavior ratings, controlling for demographic factors.

Results

Fitness was associated with better cognition, achievement and behavior, and fatness with worse scores. Specifically, executive function, mathematics and reading achievement, and parent ratings of child behavior were related to fitness and fatness. Teacher ratings were related to fitness.

Conclusion

These results extend prior studies by providing reliable, standardized measures of cognitive processes, achievement, and behavior in relation to detailed measures of fitness and fatness. However, cross-sectional associations do not necessarily indicate that improving one factor, such as fatness or fitness, will result in improvements in factors that were associated with it. Thus, randomized clinical trials are necessary to determine the effects of interventions.

Keywords: Academic achievement, Adiposity, Behavior, Child, Cognition, Cross-sectional, Fitness, Obesity, Overweight

Introduction

Childhood overweight and obesity is no longer unusual (Ogden et al., 2010). Despite the known benefits of physical activity (Daniels et al., 2005; Freedman et al., 2009), sedentary behavior is very common in children (Eaton et al., 2010). An association of overweight with poor academic performance has been shown in several epidemiological, cross-sectional and longitudinal studies (Datar et al., 2004; Dwyer et al., 2001; Shore et al., 2008; Taras and Potts-Datema, 2005; Welk et al., 2010). Aerobic fitness has also been linked with cognition and academic achievement (Aktop, 2010; Buck et al., 2008; Castelli et al., 2007; Cottrell et al., 2007; Dwyer et al., 2001; Eveland-Sayers et al., 2009; Hillman et al., 2009a, 2005; Keeley and Fox, 2009; Shore et al., 2008; Welk et al., 2010; Wittberg et al., 2010). In one large study, fitness predicted achievement more strongly than did overweight (Roberts et al., 2010).

However, most of these studies have relied on BMI as a measure of adiposity, and few used standardized psychological or educational measures. Perhaps as a result, studies have been inconsistent. For example, Gunstad and colleagues found no association between BMI and cognitive function in a large sample of children (Gunstad et al., 2008), despite several studies demonstrating an executive function disadvantage in healthy but overweight adults (Gunstad et al., 2007; Volkow et al., 2009).

Physical activity, fatness, and fitness may influence achievement by affecting on-task classroom behavior. There is some evidence linking physical activity with better classroom behavior (Dwyer et al., 1996; Grieco et al., 2009; Jarrett et al., 1998; Keays and Allison, 1995; Mahar et al., 2006; Siedentop, 2009). Thus, inactivity may detract from on-task behavior. Obesity is more common than expected in children with ADHD, and vice versa (Chen et al., 2010; Cortese et al., 2008; Waring and Lapane, 2008). Becoming obese has been linked with behavior problems in children (Lumeng et al., 2003). Another study showed cross-sectional links in girls, but not boys, and overweight status did not confer risk of developing behavior problems (Datar et al., 2004). There is little information about associations of aerobic fitness with classroom behavior.

The present study in overweight, sedentary children utilized detailed measures of fitness and fatness, and standardized psychological assessments of cognition, achievement, and behavior to quantify the cross-sectional associations among them after control for demographic factors.

Methods

Overweight (BMI-for-age≥85th percentile) and sedentary (≤1 h/week organized physical activity) but otherwise healthy 7–11 year olds (N=170, 56% female, 61% black) provided measures of anthropometry, dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry, and cognition, and parents reported demographic information and behavior ratings of their child at baseline of a randomized clinical trial. For most of these children, a graded treadmill test, MRI scans of abdominal adipose tissue, measures of academic achievement, and teacher ratings of behavior were available (see Table 1). Methods and trial results have been reported (Bassali et al., 2010; Davis and Lambourne, 2009; Davis et al., 2007, in press; Meléndez-Ortega et al., 2010; Petty et al., 2009; Tkacz et al., 2008).

Table 1.

Characteristics of the sample (Augusta, GA area, 2003–2006).

n Mean (SD)
Age (years) 170 9.3 (1.0)
Parent education 170 5.0 (1.1)
BMI z-score 170 2.08 (0.43)
Waist girth (cm) 170 76.7 (10.0)
Body fat (%) 170 40.0 (6.4)
Visceral fat (cm3) 162 31.6 (16.2)
Subcutaneous abdominal fat (cm3) 162 271.7 (92.2)
VO2 peak (ml/kg/min) 161 27.8 (5.6)
Treadmill time (s) 168 460 (199)
Cognitive Assessment System 170
 Planning 99.6 (12.3)
 Attention 97.9 (12.2)
 Simultaneous 102.8 (12.5)
 Successive 100.6 (12.1)
Woodcock–Johnson Tests of Achievement III 140
 Broad Math 104.4 (11.9)
 Broad Reading 100.3 (10.9)
Conners’ Teacher Rating Scale 145
 Oppositional Defiance 51.7 (9.6)
 Cognitive Problems/Inattention 53.2 (10.5)
 Hyperactivity 51.9 (9.1)
 ADHD Index 53.9 (11.5)
Conners’ Parent Rating Scale 170
 Oppositional Defiance 49.2 (9.1)
 Cognitive Problems/Inattention 53.1 (11.0)
 Hyperactivity 53.4 (10.0)
 ADHD Index 53.7 (10.0)
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Measures

Primary caregivers provided information on the child’s race, gender, birthdate, health history, and whether the child was enrolled in any regular physical activity program. Education level was self-reported by the child’s primary caregiver using the following scale: 1=less than 7th grade, 2=8th or 9th, 3=10th or 11th, 4=high school graduate, 5=some college, 6=college graduate, and 7=postgraduate.

Anthropometrics

Anthropometrics were measured at least twice until consistent measures were obtained. Body weight (in shorts and t-shirt) and height (without shoes) were measured with an electronic scale (Detecto, Web City, MO) and stadiometer (Tanita, Arlington Heights, IL) and converted to a BMI z-score (Ogden et al., 2002). Waist circumference was measured in cm with a Gulick fiberglass tape with tension gauge (M-22C, Creative Health Products, Plymouth MI); with the subject standing, feet slightly apart, and abdomen relaxed, a horizontal measure was taken at the narrowest point of the torso above the umbilicus and below the ribcage.

Body fat

Whole-body dual energy X-ray absorptiometry scans were performed (QDR 4500W, Hologic Inc., Bedford, MA). Percent body fat adjusts for body mass (fat mass/total body mass×100).

Visceral and subcutaneous abdominal fat

Visceral abdominal adipose tissue and subcutaneous abdominal adipose tissue volume were quantified in cm3 via magnetic resonance imaging (five 1 cm transverse slices centered around the L4–L5 disk of the lumbar spine).

Aerobic fitness

Fitness was measured with a graded treadmill test (Modified Balke Protocol for Poorly Fit Children, (American College of Sports Medicine, 2000) preceded by a warm-up (2 min at 2.5 mph, 0% grade; 2 min at 3.0 mph, 3.0% grade). Oxygen uptake was measured with a metabolic cart (Vmax Spectra 29c, SensorMedics, Yorba Linda, CA) and heart rate was recorded with a heart rate monitor which registered values during the last 15 s of each minute (S610i, Polar Electro, Kempele, Finland). Children were encouraged to walk as long as they could. Instructors stopped the test when children signaled they could not continue, when children had reached maximum according to the standard criteria, or for safety reasons. The indicators of aerobic fitness were peak VO2 (ml/kg/min) and treadmill time (s), i.e., the duration of each child’s treadmill test (Eisenmann et al., 2005). Treadmill time was included in analyses to permit a larger sample than was available for VO2 measures.

Cognitive and achievement tests

Standardized tests were selected for optimum reliability and clinical interpretability. The Cognitive Assessment System measures children’s mental abilities defined on the basis of four interrelated cognitive processes: Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, and Successive (Naglieri and Das, 1997). The Planning scale measures executive function (i.e., strategy generation and application, self-regulation, intentionality, and utilization of knowledge). The Attention scale requires focused, selective cognitive activity and resistance to distraction. The Simultaneous scale taps gestalt processing with spatial and logical questions that contain nonverbal and verbal content. The Successive scale requires analysis or recall of stimuli arranged in sequence, and formation of sounds in order. Children’s academic achievement was measured using two interchangeable forms of the Woodcock–Johnson Tests of Achievement III (McGrew and Woodcock, 2001) which were randomly counterbalanced. The Broad Reading and Broad Mathematics clusters were administered. Standard scores are reported.

Behavior ratings

Parent and teacher reports of children’s behavior were obtained (Kollins et al., 2004). Classroom behavior was evaluated with the 28-item Conners’ Teacher Rating Scales—Revised: Short (CTRS-R:S) and home behavior with the 27-item Conners’ Parent Rating Scales—Revised: Short (CPRS-R:S). These instruments include four subscales: Oppositional Defiance, Cognitive Problems/Inattention, Hyperactivity, and ADHD Index.

Analysis

Partial correlations examined baseline associations of fitness and fatness with cognitive and achievement scores, controlling for race, gender, and primary caregiver’s education level. Correlations with the behavior ratings included only race and parental education as covariates because gender was accounted for in the standard scoring method.

Results

After controlling for covariates, fitness measures were positively related to cognition and achievement, and fatness measures negatively related to these outcomes (Table 2). Specifically, the Planning and Attention scales of the CAS, and Broad Math and Broad Reading achievement clusters were related to indices of both fitness and fatness in overweight children. Figure 1 shows partial regression plots illustrating these relations. The Simultaneous scale of the CAS showed relations with fat, but not fitness. The Successive scale was unrelated to fitness or fatness.

Table 2.

Partial correlations among cognitive, achievement, behavior, fatness, and fitness measures (Augusta, GA area, 2003–2006).

BMI z-score Waist girth Body fat Visceral fat Subcutaneous abdominal fat Peak VO2 Treadmill time
Cognitive Assessment System
 Planning −0.14 −0.16* −0.22** −0.19* −0.19* 0.26** 0.23**
 Attention −0.11 −0.11 −0.16* −0.10 −0.13 0.22** 0.24**
 Simultaneous −0.19* −0.25** −0.15 −0.18* −0.24** 0.15 0.14
 Successive −0.11 −0.14 −0.11 −0.13 −0.13 −0.02 0.01
Woodcock–Johnson Tests of Achievement III
 Broad Math −0.23** −0.28** −0.23** −0.20* −0.31*** 0.25** 0.21*
 Broad Reading −0.20* −0.21* −0.20* −0.17 −0.22* 0.29** 0.28**
Conners’ Teacher Rating Scale
 Oppositional Defiance −0.03 −0.02 −0.06 −0.07 −0.02 0.06 0.11
 Cognitive Problems/Inattention 0.13 0.16* 0.11 0.07 0.16 −0.18 −0.18*
 Hyperactivity −0.04 0.01 −0.03 −0.02 −0.02 −0.02 0.01
 ADHD Index 0.04 0.08 0.06 0.00 0.14 −0.14 −0.10
Conners’ Parent Rating Scale
 Oppositional Defiance 0.07 0.13 0.06 0.09 0.10 0.01 0.00
 Cognitive Problems/Inattention 0.16* 0.19** 0.14 0.14 0.17* −0.25 −0.20**
 Hyperactivity 0.07 0.11 −0.02 0.04 0.09 −0.08 −0.01
 ADHD Index 0.15* 0.16* 0.15* 0.15 0.07 −0.26 −0.21**
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Note. The number of subjects per analysis varied from 170 (CAS and anthropometrics) to 132 (VO2 and achievement scores) due to missing data. Correlations with the Cognitive Assessment System and Woodcock–Johnson Tests of Achievement III were partialled for race, gender, and parental education. Correlations with the Conners’ Rating Scales were partialled for race and parental education.

*

p<.05.

**

p<.01.

***

p<.001.

Fig. 1.

Fig. 1

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Partial regression plots of adiposity (body fat percentage, x-axis) with Planning, Broad Math, and Broad Reading (y-axes in descending order). Points represent residuals of each variable adjusted for race, gender, and parent education (Augusta, GA area, 2003–2006). Partial regression plots of aerobic fitness (peak VO2, x-axis) with Planning, Broad Math, and Broad Reading (y-axes in descending order). Points represent residuals of each variable adjusted for race, gender, and parent education (Augusta, GA area, 2003–2006).

For the teacher ratings of children’s behavior (CTRS-R:S), only the Cognitive Problems/Inattention scale showed weak relations with a few health measures. Waist girth was positively related and treadmill time negatively related to cognitive problems. For the parent ratings (CPRS-R:S), the Cognitive Problems/Inattention scale was positively related to several fatness measures and negatively to treadmill time. The ADHD summary scale was positively related to anthropometrics and negatively to treadmill time for the parent, but not the teacher ratings. The Oppositional Defiance and Hyperactivity scales were unrelated to fatness or fitness for both teacher and parent ratings.

Discussion

The present cross-sectional study examined the associations of fitness and fatness with cognition, academic achievement, and behavior in overweight, sedentary children at the baseline of an exercise trial, controlling for demographic factors. Relating fitness with behavior ratings is novel. Fitness was positively related to cognition, achievement, and better behavior, and fatness was negatively related to these outcomes. Specifically, measures of executive function, resistance to distraction, mathematics and reading achievement, and parent ratings of child behavior were related to both fitness and fatness in overweight children. Gestalt processing was related to fatness, but not fitness. Resistance to distraction was more strongly related to fitness than fatness, with only 1 of 5 measures of fatness significantly related. Successive processing was unrelated to fitness or fatness. Fatness was inversely related to cognition, especially executive functioning and gestalt processing, and to both types of achievement. Associations with anthropometric measures were mostly comparable to those with DXA or MRI measures of adiposity, suggesting that simpler anthropometrics are adequate to pick up these relationships, and that special attributes of certain fat depots (e.g. visceral fat vs. subcutaneous) are not important mechanisms for cognition and achievement. These results suggest that children’s cognitive ability and school performance may be affected by their general physical condition, and extend prior studies by providing reliable, standardized measures of cognitive processes, behavior, and achievement in relation to detailed measures of both fitness and fatness in a sample including a substantial proportion of minority participants.

These findings are consistent with previous studies, which reported positive associations of fitness (Buck et al., 2008; Castelli et al., 2007; Cottrell et al., 2007; Dwyer et al., 2001; Eveland-Sayers et al., 2009; Hillman et al., 2009a, 2005; Keeley and Fox, 2009; Roberts et al., 2010; Welk et al., 2010; Wittberg et al., 2010) and negative associations of fatness (Castelli et al., 2007; Datar and Sturm, 2004; Datar et al., 2004; Lumeng et al., 2003; Shore et al., 2008; Taras and Potts-Datema, 2005; Welk et al., 2010) with cognition, behavior, and academic achievement. These studies provide support for the hypothesis that physical health coincides with mental health (mens sana in corpore sano), and suggest that improving physical health through physical activity might improve mental performance.

Fitness was associated with better teacher ratings of attentiveness, and better parent ratings of attentiveness and ADHD symptoms. Treadmill time was significantly related to behavior ratings while VO2 was not, despite similar or larger effect sizes, due to a smaller sample size for the more complex physiological measure. Several indices of adiposity were related to worse parent ratings of children’s attentiveness and a summary ADHD index. However, these data do not lend support to a link between fatness and poor classroom behavior. Only one measure of fatness, waist girth, was related to a teacher rating subscale. This may be due in part to a larger sample size for parent than for teacher ratings, but effect sizes were also smaller for teacher ratings.

The associations with fatness were slightly larger (though not significantly different, calculations not shown) for mathematics than reading achievement in the present study, suggesting that mathematics achievement might be more vulnerable to deleterious effects of excess adiposity that are independent of aerobic capacity. Every measure of fatness and fitness was related to mathematics achievement. Reading achievement was more strongly related to fitness than fatness. Differing results for mathematics and reading achievement suggest there may be different health mechanisms affecting them. A specific effect on mathematics, but not reading, achievement was observed in the exercise trial with these children (Davis et al., in press). A greater impact on mathematics achievement than other academic subjects was also observed in a trial promoting 90 min/week of brief physical activity bouts as part of the academic curriculum (Donnelly et al., 2009). The consistent strength of impact of physical activity on mathematics achievement in the two trials suggests a particular benefit in this area. In contrast, a trial of enhanced physical education showed a beneficial effect on reading, but not mathematics (Sallis et al., 1999). Future studies may identify the most helpful type of intervention for each academic outcome. For instance, an integrated approach of physical activity with the core academic curriculum may provide more general benefits to academic achievement than aerobic activity in physical education or outside of school (Davis et al., in press; Donnelly et al., 2009; Sallis et al., 1999).

Physical activity is thought to benefit children’s cognition and academic achievement (Sallis, 2010), despite a dearth of literature examining associations with physical activity per se (Dwyer et al., 2001; Taras, 2005), and little experimental evidence for effects of physical activity on children’s cognition or academic performance (Howie, 2010; Tomporowski et al., 2008). In the cross-sectional literature, fitness is often utilized as a proxy for physical activity (e.g., Buck et al., 2008). This is a reasonable preparatory step to screen hypotheses for possible testing in randomized trials, but because there is substantial genetic influence on fitness and variability in response to physical training (Skinner et al., 2001), fitness and physical activity should not be conflated. Improved aerobic fitness does not appear to be the mechanism driving cognitive benefits of exercise (Etnier et al., 2006). Mechanisms such as vascular and neural growth factors have been identified in animal studies as mediators of exercise benefits to the brain (Dishman et al., 2006).

Cross-sectional associations do not necessarily indicate that improving one factor, such as fatness or fitness, will result in improvements in factors that were associated with it (Keeley and Fox, 2009). For example, a randomized controlled trial with sedentary overweight children (the same one providing the baseline data presented here) demonstrated improvements in executive function and mathematics achievement due to approximately 3 months of regular aerobic exercise. Resistance to distraction, gestalt processing, reading achievement, and parent and teacher behavior ratings were unaffected by the exercise intervention (Davis and Lambourne, 2009; Davis et al., 2007, in press). Thus in the trial, exercise seemed to have only a selective impact, but this differential was not reflected in the cross-sectional associations that we present here, where relations with fatness and fitness were detected for the nonresponsive measures. Another study where cross-sectional associations were more optimistic than trial results is one by Coe et al. (2006). Students who reported engaging in more vigorous physical activity obtained higher grades, but no link with achievement test scores was observed. Unfortunately the longitudinal aspect of the study had null results: physical education enrollment showed no effect on achievement, perhaps because of the small amount of physical activity performed in those classes (Coe et al., 2006). In that study, like the results presented here, common physiological or social factors may have influenced baseline associations, rather than physical activity or fatness per se affecting cognition and achievement indices (Cottrell et al., 2007; Trudeau and Shephard, 2010).

Other controlled intervention studies have provided insufficient evidence that physical activity improves student achievement. A small cluster randomized study reported that adding 30 min of physical activity into the academic curriculum three times per week increased fluid intelligence (the ability to reason quickly and abstractly) and improved performance on the state achievement test in social studies; English/language arts, mathematics and science scores were not affected (Reed et al., 2010). However, no baseline evaluations were available, and the study was confounded by a greater prevalence of overweight in the control group that may explain their poorer cognitive scores. Another recent study (Hillman et al., 2009b) showed a beneficial effect of an acute bout of moderate physical activity vs. rest on children’s academic achievement test results, and counterbalanced the order of sessions within subjects in order to provide a control condition. Performance on a reading achievement test improved after activity; mathematics and spelling performance were unaffected. The qualifications of the achievement test user were unclear. The effects of an acute bout of activity on test results obtained later the same day imply that children perform better when they engage in physical activity just prior to a task, not that regular physical activity benefits learning. Therefore, the conclusion that regular physical activity improves academic achievement remains tentative based on the existing literature.

It is important to demonstrate effectiveness in well-designed randomized trials (Moher et al., 2010) before investing substantial societal resources in a novel strategy such as physical activity, rather than traditional instruction, in order to improve academic performance. On the other hand, the salutary effects of regular physical activity (Strong et al., 2005), along with a good safety profile compared to long-term sedentariness, argue for implementing vigorous physical activity programs for children before overwhelming experimental evidence is available (Hill, 1965). For instance, it is reasonable to make supervised physical activity programs available to children of Native American descent, though the academic benefits of exercise have not yet been experimentally demonstrated in this group. An intriguing possibility is that ethnic differences in fatness and fitness may underlie academic disparities (Roberts et al., 2010). Thus, health promotion efforts to address the childhood obesity epidemic may yield dividends in academic and social domains.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by NIH R01s DK60692 and DK70922. The authors would like to acknowledge Jerry Allison, Colleen Boyle, Catrina Creech, Mathew Gregoski, Bernard Gutin, Amanda McDougald, Joseph Tkacz, Phillip Tomporowski and other team members for their assistance, and especially the children and families who made the study possible.

Footnotes

Conflict of interest statement

There is no conflict of interest.

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