The Effect of Short Movement Breaks on Physical Activity and Attentional Concentration among Third-Year Students in the College of Physical Education and Sports Sciences

Abstract

The study aimed to design a short movement-break program suited to theoretical lectures and examine its effect on an operational indicator of physical activity and attentional concentration among third-year students at the College of Physical Education and Sports Sciences, Mustansiriyah University. Forty students were equally assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group completed one 5-minute movement break approximately 30 minutes after the start of each targeted theoretical lecture, four times per week for eight weeks (32 breaks); the control group continued with the conventional lecture format. Mean steps recorded during university attendance hours across three comparable academic days were used as the operational physical-activity indicator, and the modified Bourdon-Anfimov test was used to assess attentional concentration. Significant pre-post improvements were found in the experimental group, which also outperformed the control group at post-test. Based on Cohen's criteria, the effect sizes were large for step count (d = 1.11 within the experimental group; d = 0.81 between groups), large for the experimental group's pre-post attentional score (d = 0.86), and moderate for the between-group attentional score (d = 0.75). The program contributed to a higher mean step count during the measurement days and to improvement in the adopted attentional score. Future studies should use validated wearable motion-tracking device