12-Minute Exercise Helps Low Income Adolescents Improve Attention and Reading Comprehension

New research reveals that 12 minutes of exercise help enhance attention as well reading comprehension in low-income adolescents.

A new Dartmouth study highlights the benefits of including exercise in daily schedules in schools serving low income populations.  The study compared low-income adolescents with their high-income peers and found that indulging in 12-minutes exercise helps low-income adolescents to boost attention as well reading comprehension.

The researchers noticed that both the groups had an improvement in selective visual attention that stayed for at least 45 minutes after exercise.  But this selective visual attention or the ability to remain visually focused on something despite being distracted was more in adolescents belonging to the low-income group.

After indulging in physical activity, the low-income students also performed better in reading comprehension unlike the high-income students who fared worse.

According to the study author Michele Tine, both the groups respond differently to exercise because the level of stress they experience in life is different.

"Low-income individuals experience more stress than high-income individuals, and stress impacts the same physiological systems that acute aerobic exercise activates," Tine said. "Physiological measures were beyond the scope of this study, but low-income participants did report experiencing more stress. Alternatively, it is possible that low-income individuals improved more simply because they had more room to improve."

This latest study is a follow up of a study that was done in 2012 by the same researcher who found engaging in brief aerobic exercise enhances the selective visual attention among children and the greatest effect of this was seen in children coming from low-income families.

This new study that presents an association between exercise and reading comprehension is beneficial for adolescents. 

The finding was published as part of the June volume of Frontiers in Psychology.