Structured Exercise Improves Sleep and Executive Function in Preteens With Autism

Children with autism spectrum disorder frequently experience a complex constellation of sleep disturbances, executive dysfunction, and sensory processing challenges that complicate their daily clinical management. While pharmacological options like melatonin can address sleep latency, they often carry side effects such as morning drowsiness and do not resolve overlapping cognitive deficits. In contrast, physical activity yields a larger effect size for improving sleep (standardized mean difference of 1.13) than melatonin (standardized mean difference of 0.57) [1]. Structured physical activity serves as a potent non-pharmacological intervention, with meta-analyses demonstrating its ability to enhance inhibitory control (standardized mean difference of 1.30), cognitive flexibility (standardized mean difference of 0.85), and overall sleep efficiency in pediatric populations with neurodevelopmental disorders [2, 3, 4]. Despite these established benefits, questions remain regarding how specific, short-term exercise regimens impact objective measures of sleep architecture and problem-solving in older, high-functioning children. Recent randomized controlled trials address this gap, demonstrating that targeted physical activity programs can simultaneously improve objective sleep duration and reduce reaction times during inhibitory control tasks (849 milliseconds versus 969 milliseconds in control subjects) [5, 6].