In the present study, we evaluated the effects of a brief bout of exercise on executive function, short-term memory, and long-term memory tests. Eighteen young adults (mean age 22.2 years, s = 1.6) performed a set-switching test, a Brown-Peterson test, and a free-recall memory test before and after 40 min of moderate aerobic exercise on a cycle ergometer, and two control conditions. Exercise did not facilitate set switching or short-term memory, which suggests that exercise-induced arousal does not influence executive function processes involved in the reconfiguration of information in working memory. Exercise did alter specific aspects of delayed long-term memory. Free recall of items in the primacy and recency portions of the word list declined following the rest and non-exercise conditions, but was maintained after exercise, which suggests that exercise-induced arousal may facilitate the consolidation of information into long-term memory.

The short-term aftereffects of a bout of moderate aerobic exercise were hypothesized to facilitate children's executive functioning as measured by a visual task-switching test. Sixty-nine children (mean age = 9.2 years) who were overweight and inactive performed a category-decision task before and immediately following a 23-min bout of treadmill walking and, on another session, before and following a nonexercise period. The acute bout of physical activity did not influence the children's global switch cost scores or error rates. Age-related differences in global switch cost scores, but not error scores, were obtained. These results, in concert with several studies conducted with adults, fail to confirm that single bouts of moderately intense physical activity influence mental processes involved in task switching.Keywords exercise psychology; pediatrics; cognition; information processing Exercise-induced physical arousal has been shown to facilitate specific types of mental functioning in adults (see reviews by Brisswalter, Collardeau, & Arcelin, 2002;McMorris & Graydon, 2000;Tomporowski, 2003b); however, very few studies have assessed the shortterm aftereffects of acute bouts of physical activity on children's cognitive function, and most of these studies have focused on children with developmental disabilities (Tomporowski, 2003a). Research conducted with children without development disorders has been designed, for the most part, to determine whether bouts of physical activity performed as part of school curricula would have a detrimental impact on children's classroom behavior and academic performance. The results of three field-based studies indicated that bouts of physical activity improved, rather than debilitated, children's cognitive performance (Caterino & Polak, 1999;Gabbard & Barton, 1979;McNaughten & Gabbard, 1993), and another study (Raviv & Low, 1990) found no evidence to support anecdotal observations that recess and physical education activities overly excite children. Only one laboratory-based experiment has evaluated normal children's cognitive function immediately following a bout of steady-state exercise. Zervas, Apostolos, and Klissouras (1991) recruited 9 pairs of monozygotic twin boys (age range = 11-14 years) and assigned one twin to a 25-week structured aerobic physical fitness training program and the other twin to a traditional physical education class. Following training, the children performed a design-matching task before and 15 min following a strenuous 20-min treadmill run (speed range = 12-14 kph). The pre-and postexercise cognitive performance of trained and untrained twins was compared with the performance of eight age-matched children who did not complete the treadmill run. The acute bout of exercise resulted in improved design-NIH Public Access

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