The Mediation Role of Executive Function in the Relationship between Physical Wellbeing and Cognitive Outcomes among Preschool Children

Abstract

The connection among physical well-being with cognitive outcomes in children has attracted a lot of interest, but it's unclear if executive function plays a function in mediating this connection. The research's goal was to look into the linkage among physical well-being, executive function, and cognitive outcomes, especially if the linkage between physical well-being and cognitive outcomes is direct or indirect through executive function. This is a cross-sectional study. 281 children aged 3 to 6 years were tested on gross motor skill, physical fitness, fine motor skill, executive function, visual organisation, and discrimination, reasoning skills, expressive and receptive vocabularies, and fundamental educational ability in this study.There was a substantial linkage between physical well-being and executive function (β=0.611, t=15.064, p<.001), executive function and cognitive outcomes (β=0.643, t=11.635, p<.001) in a partial least squares structural equation model connecting physical well-being to executive function as well as cognitive outcomes. Through executive function, there is a significant indirect link among physical well-being with cognitive outcomes (β=0.392, t= 8.970, p<.001). Executive function acted as a mediator among physical well-being with cognitive outcomes. This emphasises the significance of including executive function in studies of the correlation between physical well-being and cognitive outcomes in children.