Abstract
The Problem. The central hypothesis is that students who show a greater improvement in cardiorespiratory fitness will show more of an improvement in basic arithmetic than those students who do not show an improvement in cardiorespiratory fitness; and that the improvement will be greater for those students in the lower ranges of arithmetic performance than for those in the higher ranges of arithmetic performance. The following correlations were done in order to answer the central hypothesis: (1) Correlations between arithmetic performance and fitness performance for boys versus girls, (2) correlations between arithmetic performance and fitness performance for students who received additional cardiorespiratory fitness training as part of their regular physical education program, (3) correlations between the gain scores of students in the high, medium and low ranges of performance in basic arithmetic performance and their gain scores in cardiorespiratory fitness, (4) correlations between cardiorespiratory fitness, performance in basic arithmetic and attendance. Research Methodology. Data derived from a pre-post basic skills arithmetic test, pre-post cardiorespiratory fitness test and attendance gathered from 280 students was treated using the Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient, independent 't' test, related 't' test and chi-square. Findings. (1) There is a correlation between cardiorespiratory fitness and performance in basic arithmetic performance for fifth grade students, (2) there is a significant difference (p < .01) in improvement of cardiorespiratory fitness and performance in basic arithmetic performance for students who were in the experimental group versus students who were in the control group, (3) there is a higher correlation between improvement in cardiorespiratory fitness and improvement in basic arithmetic performance for students in the low and medium ranges of performance in basic arithmetic than for students in the higher ranges of performance, (4) there is a negative correlation between days absent and improvement in cardiorespiratory fitness and improvement in basic arithmetic performance for the experimental and control groups. Conclusions and Recommendations. There is a correlation between improvement in cardiorespiratory fitness and improvement in arithmetic performance for fifth grade students. While the correlations found in the study are not large, the positive trend suggests that further investigation would be appropriate. . . . (Author's abstract exceeds stipulated maximum length. Discontinued here with permission of author.) UMI.