ArticleFrontiers in psychology2025
Football training vs. martial arts training: How are they related to executive function skills in 5-6-year-old boys?
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Early Childhood Movement- and Arts-Based Experiences and Executive Functions: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Extracurricular activities as a moderator of the association between screen time and executive functions in children.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Effects of community-based open and closed skill exercise interventions on ecological executive function and mobile phone dependence of adolescents.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Sports training is one of the most popular extracurricular activities among preschool and elementary school children. The aim of this pilot study was to compare executive function skills in preschool boys who participated in football training and those who undertook martial arts training. The participants were sixty (60) typically developing 5-6-year-old boys from large Russian cities. There were two groups with 30 boys in each group: a football group and a martial arts group. Inclusion criteria were as follows: (a) male gender; (b) boys did not attend any extracurricular activities other than their football training or martial arts training; (c) the duration of football or martial arts training session was more than 30 min; (d) boys attended these trainings for at least 6 months and no more than 2 years. Caregivers reported on the specifics of child's attendance at sports training and child's age, maternal education, and family income, which were used as control variables. The results indicated that boys involved in football training had significantly higher spatial component of visuospatial working memory compared to boys involved in martial arts training. Taken together, these findings suggest that football training compared to martial arts training in 5-6-year-old boys may have more potential in terms of developing spatial component of visuospatial working memory. The results of this pilot study could serve as a basis for further investigation on this topic.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.