The Effects of Eight-Month Physical Activity Intervention on Vigilance Performance in Adult Obese Population

ABSTRACT

We aim to analyze the effects of an 8-month physical activity intervention on cardiorespiratory fitness, body mass index (BMI), and vigilance performance in an adult obese population. We conducted an 8-month physical activity intervention based on dance and rhythmic activities. The weekly frequency was 2 sessions of 1 hr per day. Training sessions were divided into 3 phases: a 10-min warm-up, 40 min of dance and rhythmic activities, and 10 min to cool-down. To assess cardiorespiratory fitness, participants performed a modified version of the 6-min walk test from the Senior Fitness Test battery (Larsson & Mattsson, 2001; Rikli & Jones, 1999). Vigilance performance was measured by means of the psychomotor vigilance task (PVT). Two measurements were performed immediately before and after the intervention. The results revealed that participants improved their cardiorespiratory fitness, BMI, and vigilance performance after the intervention. All in all, findings contribute new empirical evidence to the field that investigates the benefits of physical activity intervention on cognitive processes in obese population.

Keywords:

• attention
• cognition
• motor performance
• exercise

Notes

1. We believe that this broad definition is appropriate in the context of the present research and closely related to the task used to measure participants’ vigilance capacity. Moreover, we decided to use vigilance and sustained attention as synonyms. In any case, we are aware of the theoretical debate regarding vigilance and sustained attention definition and the cognitive processes involved.

2. An a priori power analysis was conducted to determine the minimum sample size required for a power level of .95. Due to the inexistence of any interventional study, which explored the effects of physical activity intervention on vigilance performance, our analysis could not be based on data from previous studies. For the physiological data test we assumed an effect size of .70 for the two-tailed t test. For the behavioral data, within-participants ANOVAs were employed assuming an effect size of .35. This gave an outcome of 29 participants.