RT - Journal Article T1 - The Role of Education through Physical Activity on Improving Social Relationships and Emotional Regulation JF - RJMS YR - 2022 JO - RJMS VO - 29 IS - 6 UR - http://rjms.iums.ac.ir/article-1-7143-en.html SP - 134 EP - 143 K1 - Physical Activity K1 - Social Relations K1 - Emotional Regulation K1 - Smart Schools AB - Background & Aims: Physical activity and a moderate level of fitness is a focal point in health benefits associated with lifestyle. Regular physical activity in adults can promote good health, improve cognitive function, and prevent disease. Abundant research from the health and exercise science literature also presents empirical evidence of positive “non-health effects” induced by physical activity or sports participation. Among the non-health effects, physical activity improves life satisfaction, happiness, subjective well-being, mental health, and interpersonal relations. Emotion regulation is a vital component of everyday life and inappropriate emotion regulation has been associated with a variety of psychiatric disorders and aggression. Broadly speaking, emotion regulation refers to a diverse set of processes by which “individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these emotions”. Although there are many different approaches people can use to regulate their emotions, two well-studied strategies are expressive suppression and emotional reappraisal. These two processes appear to differ in their effect on emotional experience and the associated psychophysiological processes, such as heart rate, skin conductance responses and neural activity. Whereas reappraisal is often capable of lowering emotional experience, reducing or altering psychophysiological activity, and improving social functioning, expressive suppression seems much less effective in these respects and might even have negative social consequences. Nevertheless, regulatory effects of suppression on neural responses have been observed, albeit later in time than was observed for reappraisal and which may reflect increased effort to continue inhibition or cognitive control when people are asked to suppress negative emotions. The effectiveness of regulation has been tested in various circumstances including the ability to increase and decrease positive emotions, the associated physiology and neural responses as induced by film clips and expectations of reward. However, the majority of studies to date are restricted to measuring the ability to regulate negative feelings induced by either the viewing of negatively-valenced images or by the anticipation of negative events, such as electric shocks. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of emotion regulation strategies is dependent to some degree on the specific type of stimulus and the emotion to be regulated. Regulation of emotion and social relationships are important factors related to participatory activities for students; Therefore, the purpose of this study was the role of teaching science and knowledge through physical activity on improving social relationships and emotional regulation. Methods: In this quasi-experimental study, the statistical population included all female second and third grade elementary school students in Zahedan in the academic year 2010-2011. Due to the quasi-experimental study, 30 people were selected by purposive sampling. They were randomly assigned to experimental (n = 15) and control (n = 15) groups. Barton (1990) Social Relations Questionnaire and Gross and John (2003) Emotional Regulation Questionnaire were used to collect data. The method of physical activity intervention was 12 sessions and each session for one hour for experimental groups. Data analysis was performed using dependent t-test and independent t-test. Results: The results of intra-group study showed that in the experimental group the level of social relations and re-evaluation increased significantly (P = 0.002 and P = 0.002, respectively), but the level of repression decreased (P = 0.001). On the other hand, the intergroup study showed that training through physical activity led to improved social relationships, re-evaluation and repression in the experimental group compared to the control group (P = 0.002, P = 0.001, P = 0.003, respectively). Conclusion: Social support, a potential correlate of leisure time physical activity (LTPA), can broadly be defined as resources provided by other persons. It is a multidimensional concept; emotional support provides love and caring, whereas practical support provides tangible assistance with a task or goal. Lack of social support has repeatedly been associated with higher morbidity and mortality. It is possible that part of this relationship is attributable to the association between social support and LTPA, mental health being a plausible intermediary factor. For example, social ties and integration in social networks play a role in the maintenance of psychological well-being, which in turn might motivate self-care in individuals, including regular physical exercise. High levels of social support are also assumed to increase self-esteem, self-efficacy and perceptions of control over the environment, all of which can potentially help an individual to adopt a proactive lifestyle and to resist unhealthy behaviours, such as sedentariness. Furthermore, indirect evidence is consistent with a causal chain linking low social support to an increased risk of psychiatric morbidity and psychiatric morbidity to lower physical activity. On the other hand, it can also be argued that people with fewer social ties have more time to exercise. The mechanisms explaining these associations remain unclear. A positive role identity and feelings of being useful provided by nurturing close social relationships can lead to greater motivation to take care of oneself and maintain a physically active lifestyle. High social support may also indicate positive involvement and active influence of a close person, which can encourage the individual to maintain health-promoting behaviours, such as regular exercise. In addition, it is possible that higher social support is associated with better access to resources and may help to buffer the impact of daily stressors and life events and thereby reduce the likelihood of unhealthy coping behaviours such as discontinuing LTPA. A growing literature examines the outcomes associated with sports participation by using large-scale surveys. The literature can be grouped into three strands. First, many authors have studied the impact of sports participation among other activities as one of the ways social capital can be generated. Second, other studies have focused on the role of sports on children, that is, how sports activities favor the development of prosocial skills and attitudes. Finally, several authors have recently focused on the effects of social identity and a sense of belonging induced by team sports. Looking at the effects of sports participation on skills development in children, Felfe, Lechner, and Steinmayr (2016) find that cognitive and noncognitive skills are both affected by sports participation. They also find that children participating in sports have fewer problems with peers, and this fosters better relationship. In general, the results showed that in smart schools, physical activity interventions should be used for learners to improve the level of psychological factors. LA eng UL http://rjms.iums.ac.ir/article-1-7143-en.html M3 ER -