Recently students of high school level education and above have experienced difficulty maintaining concentration in their classes. As students have easy access to numerous distractions through cell phones, laptops and tablet PC’s, it is no surprise that concentration is a growing problem among students nationwide. Students have even resorted to often dangerous methods including prescription drugs, like Vyvanse, Adderall and Strattera, to help remedy their lack of attention. The results of a recent study, however, may provide some relief to these struggling scholars. An experiment conducted by Japanese researchers found a positive correlation between correct posture and improved academic writing. According to this study sitting with good posture allows students to increase their academic performance and remain attentive. The study suggests, rather than relying on external influences to increase concentration, students should instead improve their academic performances through conscious alterations of their posture.
The experiment was conducted in two second grade Japanese public elementary schools. The participants of the study consisted of sixty-five students divided nearly evenly among two classrooms, Class A and Class B. Preliminary data was collected regarding the number of students who initially presented good posture in each class. The results of this observation showed that only 42.1% of students in Class A and 29.5% of students in Class B demonstrated good posture. The teachers of each class implemented an intervention package designed to improve the posture of the student’s. The teachers conducted this posture clinic everyday during the morning sessions ten minutes before the first period classes began. Appropriate posture for this experiment was defined as feet flat on the floor, buttocks in contact with the chair seat, back straight, and forward body direction.
Throughout the day, in both Math and Japanese language classes observers monitored and recorded the posture of the students, in order to determine the effects of the intervention in academic situations. The observers, after viewing a student’s posture immediately gave the student an attractive sticker, if they displayed good posture or offered the student corrections and a less attractive sticker if they displayed poor posture. The use of two separate stickers offered the students added incentive to use appropriate posture. To ensure the observations were reliable, two teachers and three observers were trained to observe a child’s sitting posture accurately. These monitors learned to evaluate sitting posture after watching several training videos regarding the components of appropriate sitting posture.
The actual study, determining the relation between correct posture and academic writing was conducted throughout the day. As a method of collecting data, students were asked, on several occasions each day, to copy short Japanese sentences from a handout. To assess the effect of good posture on writing performance and productivity, the researchers counted the number of Japanese characters written by the children. Throughout the duration of the study, no praise or feedback was given to the students regarding their writing, so as to not corrupt the possible improvements due to appropriate posture with task-specific reinforcement.
After the posture intervention in both Class A and Class B, data was again collected regarding the number of students who presented good posture in each of the classes. The results showed that 86.6% of students in class A and 93.4% of students in class B demonstrated good posture after the intervention package was implemented. When compared to the preliminary baseline data collected, the number of students presenting appropriate posture after the intervention is much greater. Also the mean number of characters written by the students increased from 57.2 characters in the baseline results to 64.5 characters after the intervention.
The results of this study demonstrated the effectiveness of a classroom based behavioral intervention package for increasing children’s appropriate sitting posture in elementary classrooms. The amount of the children’s writing task increased as their posture improved. This suggests that appropriate posture is important for improved academic performance.
Works Cited:
| Noda W., Tanaka-Matsumi J. |
| Effect of a classroom-based behavioral intervention package on the improvement of children's sitting posture in Japan |
| (2009) Behavior Modification, 33 (2), pp. 263-273. |
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