Does Sports Participation Buffer the Cognitive Cost of Academic Stress? A Moderated Mediation Analysis of Concentration and Intelligence among Indian Adolescents

Abstract

Abstract Academic stress is a well-documented correlate of impaired cognitive functioning among adolescents, yet the mechanism through which this occurs, and the conditions under which it can be buffered, remain underspecified in the Indian school context. Building on conservation-of-resources and executive-function theory, this study tested a moderated mediation model in which concentration mediates the relationship between academic stress and intelligence, with sports participation hypothesized to moderate the stress–concentration path. Data were drawn from a stratified sample of 900 adolescent students (ages 13–18 years; 450 sports participants, 450 non-participants) across CBSE, ICSE, and UP Board schools in the Meerut region of India, using standardized measures of academic stress, concentration, intelligence, and sports participation status. A moderated mediation model was estimated using ordinary least squares path analysis with bootstrapped confidence intervals (5,000 resamples), following the conditional process modelling approach. Academic stress significantly predicted lower concentration (a = −.42, p < .001), which in turn significantly predicted intelligence (b = .38, p < .001), yielding a significant indirect effect. The Stress × Sports Participation interaction on concentration was significant (b3 = .15, p = .012), such that the negative effect of stress on concentration was markedly weaker among sports participants than non-participants. The index of moderated mediation was significant (index = .057, 95% CI [.018, .099]), and the conditional indirect effect of stress on intelligence via concentration was roughly 36% smaller among sports participants (−.103, 95% CI [−.152, −.059]) than non-participants (−.160, 95% CI [−.221, −.101]). These findings identify concentration as a proximal cognitive mechanism linking academic stress to intelligence test performance and provide quantitative evidence that habitual sports participation attenuates this pathway, offering a mechanistic rationale for embedding structured physical activity within stress-management and cognitive-support programming in schools. Keywords: moderated mediation; conditional process analysis; academic stress; concentration; intelligence; sports participation; adolescents