Archery and attention in children: Akyurek 2025

Eighty Turkish children and adolescents aged 9 to 14 were compared on attention, reaction times and school marks, divided into four groups: 28 who did archery only, 12 who did archery and another sport, 24 who did another sport without ever having shot, and 16 who did no sport. In the two archery groups the Olympic bow outnumbered the compound (24 of 28 and 11 of 12).

The average mark for the previous term is higher among those who did archery only: 93.18 against 89.75 in the mixed group, 84.63 among those doing another sport and 83.94 among those doing none (Kruskal-Wallis 20.962, p < 0.001). The pairwise comparison holds between the first group and the last two; between the two archery groups the difference is not significant.

Reaction time to a visual stimulus is shortest among those combining archery with another sport: 380.75 milliseconds, against 450.43 for archery only, 463.92 for another sport and 498.94 for no sport (Kruskal-Wallis 8.692, p = 0.034). Reaction time to a sound does not separate the groups (from 464.00 to 486.19 milliseconds, p = 0.781), and neither does the anticipation task (p = 0.458). Attention, measured with the Bourdon test, is likewise alike in all four groups: from 89.68 to 93.92 correct responses, p = 0.711.

The study is descriptive and cross-sectional: a single round of testing, carried out face to face, with the children recruited through archery clubs and with parental consent. Entry to the first group required at least six months of Olympic archery, and anyone who had practised traditional archery or another sport was excluded; the second group required at least six months of archery and of another sport, and the third and fourth excluded any archery experience.

Attention is measured with the Bourdon test: on a sheet carrying 660 letters in a set arrangement, the child has to mark every a, b, d and g, 119 in all (31, 30, 29 and 29), with five minutes allowed; the score is the number of correct responses.

Reaction times come from a computer program used in other Turkish studies, which measures three things. Visual reaction is the time between a one-centimetre coloured square appearing in the middle of the screen and a key being pressed, averaged over three trials. Auditory reaction is the same with sounds delivered at random intervals, three per round. The anticipation task shows a bar moving from left to right and passing inside a fixed bar in the centre: the child presses the key at the moment they think the bar will emerge on the other side, and the programme returns the expected value, the given value and a success percentage.

The average mark is the one the child stated on the initial form, for the previous term. Since the data were not normally distributed, the four groups are compared with the Kruskal-Wallis test, with within-group comparisons where needed. The paper is in Turkish, with an English abstract.

The four groups differ in age, and not by a little: a mean of 11.21 years in the archery-only group, 11.67 in the mixed group, 10.46 in the other-sport group and 9.56 in the no-sport group. The group doing no sport, the one with the lowest marks and the slowest reactions, is a year and a half to two years younger. School marks and reaction times both depend on age, and age was not adjusted for in any way: this is the study's most serious weakness and it does not appear among the ones declared.

The authors list among their limitations the small sample and the fact that academic achievement was measured only by the end-of-term average. To these can be added that the average was stated by the child on the form rather than taken from school records, and that nothing was collected about family background: enrolling a child in an archery club is not within every family's reach, and the resulting selection may explain much of a gap in marks.

The design is cross-sectional, so the paper's conclusion, that archery has positive effects on achievement and on visual reaction, goes beyond what the data allow. Attention, auditory reaction and anticipation do not separate the groups, yet the discussion presents the mixed group as having the highest attention: the difference is not significant, and the authors say so. The mixed group, the only one that stands out on visual reaction, numbers twelve children.

Two notes on the measures. The text describes the mixed group's reaction speed as higher, whereas the figures are times, and the shorter time marks the faster reaction. The anticipation task is reported with values between 62 and 70, which are not milliseconds like the other two and most probably correspond to the programme's success percentage, though the unit is not stated. The Bourdon test, finally, is scored by counting correct responses only: omissions and errors do not enter the score.

The study is about children who practise archery as an activity, not about sporting performance: nobody shot an arrow during the data collection. Anyone who finds it cited as proof that archery improves children's attention is reading something the paper does not contain: attention, measured with the Bourdon test, was alike in all four groups, and so were reaction to a sound and the anticipation task.

What the comparison does show is a gap in school marks between the children who did archery only and those who did not shoot, and a shorter visual reaction time in the twelve who combined archery with another sport. Both of these, in a cross-sectional comparison where the no-sport group is two years younger and the families are not comparable, say where the difference lies rather than what produced it. The paper's conclusion, calling for more facilities and more archery in schools, is a proposal by the authors.

For a youth coach, a piece of context remains: among eighty Turkish children aged 9 to 14, those enrolled at an archery club had higher school marks than peers who did no sport, and none of the attention or reaction measures, bar one of four, separated the groups. In the registry it counts as indirect and weak evidence, in a population of beginners.