Acute aerobic exercise improves memory across intensity and fitness levels

ABSTRACT

The present study was designed to examine the impact of exercise intensity and aerobic fitness on free recall, judgments of learning (JOLs), and metacognitive accuracy. In Experiment 1, 30 college students engaged in either (1) no exercise, (2) light exercise (55% of predicted maximal heart rate), or (3) moderate exercise (75% of predicted maximal heart rate) on three different days. In Experiment 2, 29 high-fit students (VO₂ max ≥ 70th percentile) and 28 low-fit students (VO₂ max ≤ 50th percentile) completed sedentary and light exercise conditions. In both experiments, free recall scores significantly increased in the exercise conditions compared with the sedentary condition, but JOL magnitude and metacognitive accuracy were largely unaffected. These results demonstrate that exercise can improve recall at both light and high intensities, and that the benefit can be obtained by individuals regardless of their fitness level.

KEYWORDS:

• Recall
• metacognition
• judgments of learning (JOLs)
• fitness
• aerobic exercise

Acknowledgements

Data from Experiment 1 were presented in April 2013 at the 54th annual meeting of the Southwestern Psychological Association held in Fort Worth, TX. The authors wish to thank Jamie Sarten for assistance with data collection in Experiment 1 and Rachel Layton for assistance with data collection in Experiment 2.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Krystle E. Zuniga http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3857-155X

William L. Kelemen http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3965-1025

Notes

1 Mean recall scores were computed for each participant across sessions to identify possible outliers. Three participants had scores that exceeded ±2 SDs from the mean and their data were excluded from all analyses involving recall and metacognitive accuracy.

2 One participant did not properly use the JOL scale (i.e., produced a large number of missing observations and JOLs out of the 0–100 range). Therefore, we excluded data from this participant from the analyses on JOL magnitude and metacognitive accuracy.

3 Mean recall scores were computed for each participant across sessions to identify possible outliers. Five participants had scores that exceeded ±2 SDs from the mean and their data were excluded from all analyses involving recall and metacognitive accuracy.

4 Two participants did not properly use the JOL scale and their data were excluded from the analyses on JOL magnitude and metacognitive accuracy.