This paper aims to collect a compendium of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) exploring the effects of cognitively engaging physical activity (PA) interventions (basketball and floorball) on various domain-specific executive functions (EFs) in children aged 4 to 12. Following the PRISMA principle, 11 articles (total sample size: 2053) were analyzed for effect size and moderating impact with Stata 13.0 software. Overall EFs (SMD = 0.21, 95% CI 0.10 to 0.32, p < 0.05), updating (SMD = 0.17, 95% CI 0.03 to 0.30, p < 0.05) and shifting (SMD = 0.32, 95% CI 0.02 to 0.61, p < 0.05) were enhanced by cognitively engaging PA interventions. Age and BMI were found to have no effect on overall EFs performance in Meta regression. Overall EFs performance was improved by interventions with a session length (≥35 min) (SMD = 0.30, 95 % CI 0.10 to 0.49, p = 0.033). The review suggests that despite the moderate effect sizes, cognitively engaging PA may be an effective approach to improving EFs in children aged 4 to 12, especially updating and shifting.

Background: Motor development plays an important role in human development throughout the lifespans, from conception to death, and has received increasing scholarly attention in recent years. However, valuable comprehensive reviews and literature analysis on this topic are still lacking. Here, this bibliometric study aimed to identify global motor development research hotspots and trends on preschool children’s motor development from 2012 to 2022.Methods: CiteSpace 6.1.R4 was used to visualize and analyze general bibliometric characteristics, research hotspots, and trends through a review of 2,583 articles on the motor development of preschool children, which were published from 2012 to 2022 and included in the Web of Science Core Collection.Results: Research on motor development in preschool children has been carried out into a phase of rapid development. The top five frequently occurring keywords were physical activity (n = 489), performance (n = 319), intervention (n = 222), health (n = 196), and executive function (n = 165); The top five keywords in terms of centrality are academic achievement (0.22), low birth weight (0.16), association (0.14), brain (0.13), and cerebral palsy (0.13). Thirteen keyword clusters were produced from the log-likelihood ratio (Q = 0.74, S = 0.88), and five research topics has been received focused attention in recent years. The keywords with the strongest citation bursts in the last 5 years are developing country (S = 5.92), school-aged children (S = 5.86), middle-income country (S = 3.46), efficacy (S = 5.41), readiness (S = 3.21), motor proficiency (S = 3.6), and screen time (S = 3.3), indicating newly emerging research trends.Conclusion: The results indicated that interventions involving fundamental movement skills, cognitive function, 24-h movement behaviors, neurodevelopmental disorders, and health-related fitness were hot topics in the field of motor development over the last decade. Emerging research trends generally center on school readiness, socioeconomic status, motor proficiency, and screen time.