Effects of an Acute Bout of Exercise on Cognitive Aspects of Stroop Performance

Recent reviews of the literature have demonstrated that exercise has a positive impact on cognitive performance. The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of an acute bout of aerobic exercise on executive functioning in college-age adults. For the experimental intervention, the effects of 20 min of self-paced moderate-intensity exercise on a treadmill were compared to the effects of a 20-min sedentary control period. Executive functioning was assessed using Stroop color-word interference and negative priming tests. Results indicated that the bout of exercise led to improved performance on the Stroop color-word interference task but no change in performance on the negative priming task. This finding suggests that exercise may facilitate cognitive performance by improving the maintenance of goal-oriented processing in the brain.