Effects of acute cardiovascular exercise and coordinative motor activity on verbal functions and attention

Language is a cognitive domain essential for communication; however, its responsiveness to acute physical exercise or activity is unexplored. This quasi-randomized trial examined the effects of different intervention modalities on verbal functions and attention. Ninety-eight participants were assigned to high-intensity interval training (HIIT), coordinatively demanding motor activity (COOR), or a sedentary control group (CG). A pre–post design with a 24-hour follow-up assessed semantic (VFsem) and category-switching verbal fluency (VFsw), verbal learning, and attention. No group × time effects were observed for verbal learning encoding ( p = .258); however, HIIT showed a steeper learning slope compared to CG ( p = .044). Following an interference list, proactive interference was unaffected ( p = .428), whereas retroactive interference differed significantly between groups ( p = .019), with CG showing lower susceptibility than both intervention groups. No group differences were found for consolidation after 20 min or 24 h ( p ’s ≥ .271). Semantic verbal fluency improved significantly following HIIT relative to CG ( p = .029), with no significant effects in VFsw ( p = .221) or attention ( p = .187). We conclude an intensity-dependent pattern following the interventions, manifesting as enhanced semantic lexical retrieval and an exploratory finding of a steeper encoding following HIIT, compared to CG, with COOR in between, accompanied by an increased susceptibility to retroactive interference.