Bakar, Mawar Siti Hajar Abu
(2020)
The effect of brain breaks on motivation to physical activity, sustained attention, short-term memory, and academic performance among malay primary school children.
Masters thesis, Universiti Sains Malaysia.
Abstract
Brain breaks is a physical activity (PA) video that is used to stimulate student’s health
and learning and was designed for school settings. The purpose of this study was to measure
the effects of brain-breaks on motives of participation in PA, sustained attention, short-term
memory, and academic performance among Malay primary school children in Kelantan. The
intensity of brain breaks implemented was low to moderate intensity. A total of 159 male
and 176 female children aged 10 to 11 years old (mean age = 10.51 ± 0.50) from two schools
in Kelantan were recruited in this study. Purposive sampling was used to divide the children
into intervention (n = 183) and control (n = 152) groups. The brain breaks intervention was
conducted one to three times per week for four months with each session lasting 15-30
minutes. The instruments used were PA and Leisure Motivation Scale Youth-Malay version
(PALMS-Y-M), Digit Span Test (DST), Digit Vigilance Test (DVT) and Average Grade
Score (AGS). These tests were carried out at two time-points, pre- and post-tests. Mixed
analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to analyse the data. The results showed significant
changes in PA motives for enjoyment, F (1, 243) = 5.162, p-value = 0.024; appearance, F
(1, 243) = 3.998, p-value = 0.047; psychological, F (1, 243) = 6.243, p-value = 0.013;
sustained attention for numbers 6: total time F (1, 332) = 8.151, p-value = 0.005; and 9: total
time F (1, 327) = 9.778, p-value = 0.002 and frequency of error made: F (1, 329) = 38.725,
p-value < 0.001; short-term memory F (1, 301) = 38.381, p-value < 0.001. In conclusion,brain breaks was successful in improving children’s short-term memory and sustained
attention while maintaining motives for PA participation. Future research should consider
adding other tests to measure the cognitive domains of students for a more comprehensive
insight.
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