Review History


All reviews of published articles are made public. This includes manuscript files, peer review comments, author rebuttals and revised materials. Note: This was optional for articles submitted before 13 February 2023.

Peer reviewers are encouraged (but not required) to provide their names to the authors when submitting their peer review. If they agree to provide their name, then their personal profile page will reflect a public acknowledgment that they performed a review (even if the article is rejected). If the article is accepted, then reviewers who provided their name will be associated with the article itself.

View examples of open peer review.

Summary

  • The initial submission of this article was received on September 23rd, 2024 and was peer-reviewed by 2 reviewers and the Academic Editor.
  • The Academic Editor made their initial decision on January 25th, 2025.
  • The first revision was submitted on March 4th, 2025 and was reviewed by 1 reviewer and the Academic Editor.
  • The article was Accepted by the Academic Editor on March 16th, 2025.

Version 0.2 (accepted)

· Mar 16, 2025 · Academic Editor

Accept

Dear Authors,

Congratulations on the acceptance of your paper.

[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Mike Climstein, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]

·

Basic reporting

All my questions have been addressed.

Experimental design

All my questions have been addressed.

Validity of the findings

All my questions have been addressed.

Additional comments

None.

Version 0.1 (original submission)

· Jan 25, 2025 · Academic Editor

Major Revisions

Upon review of your manuscript the reviewers have identified several areas for improvement. In particular, queries around experimental design and the prospect of additional analyses (where relevant/applicable).

[# PeerJ Staff Note: It is PeerJ policy that additional references suggested during the peer-review process should *only* be included if the authors are in agreement that they are relevant and useful #]

[# PeerJ Staff Note: The review process has identified that the English language must be improved. PeerJ can provide language editing services if you wish - please contact us at [email protected] for pricing (be sure to provide your manuscript number and title). Your revision deadline is always extended while you undergo language editing. #]

·

Basic reporting

The introduction and discussion needs to be updated for different mechanisms of change. Additional references need to be added relating to the various meta-analyses done to date in typically developing children.

Experimental design

Sub-group analysis by age if there are sufficient studies. Please also report the GRADE evidence profile of each outcome.

Validity of the findings

The discussion needs to be updated for other mechanisms of change.

Reviewer 2 ·

Basic reporting

Basic reporting/references/figures:
- Title: should be “in children with overweight and obesity”
- Please correct for grammatical errors throughout
- Please use person-first language (“child with obesity” not “obese child”)
- Background: I’m not sure it’s true that a decrease in executive function is a cause of obesity. Citations refer to an association only.
- Discussion section is quite long; the first paragraph re-iterates what was discussed in the intro; perhaps can shorten and tighten up the discussion to be more succinct and clear.

Experimental design

Experimental design:
- Systematic review and meta-analysis is a strong study design to answer the research question
- Please clarify if the use of the term “intervention” in the search will omit studies of exercise in children that is not part of an intervention (ie epidemiological studies of “real-world” or “naturally occurring” exercise in children, stratified by age)
- Surprised that there were only 13 studies in the inclusion; is it possible that some studies were missed given the specific exercise names given in the inclusion?

Validity of the findings

Validity of findings:
- Could there be confounders to the observed effects on cognition? Could weight loss alone have led to the improvement? Did this analysis account for that?

Additional comments

none

All text and materials provided via this peer-review history page are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.