Running During Encoding Improves Word Learning for Children

Abstract

The learning of new information is an important task in everyday life, especially at a young age. Acute physical exercise can facilitate cognitive processes in multiple ways, and previous studies have shown that memory can profit from physical exercise before and during the encoding of vocabulary. The current study investigates the interplay of movement and vocabulary learning and also addresses lifespan differences in these effects. Participants were recruited in a recreational basketball club. Children (n = 24, M age = 12.3 years; 13 girls), young adults (n = 30, M age = 21.5 years; 17 women), and older adults (n = 24, M age = 59.3 years; 9 women) learned 20 new pseudo-words, which corresponded to a German word. In a between-subjects design, encoding took place either while standing, while running, or while running and dribbling a basketball. Recall was assessed three times throughout the learning session and on the following day. In children, more words could be remembered in the running condition compared to the standing condition. There were no differences between conditions for the young and older adults. Age-dependent reasons for this pattern of results are discussed and embedded into the literature of physical exercise. Our result suggests that implementing learning activities into children's physical education or exercise activities could be beneficial.

Can acute resistance exercise facilitate episodic memory encoding?

“…It is possible that the continuous exercises of moderate intensities were better suited than our paradigm to elicit positive effects on memory. A recent study by Amico and Schaefer (2020) neither found performance benefits nor decreases in young adults who were running while encoding vocabulary (as opposed to sitting). However, teenagers profited from the running condition, and outperformed their peers who encoded the words while standing or while dribbling a basketball.…”

The effects of acute exercise on long-term episodic memory: a systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Remembering items for later recall is influenced by a wide variety of factors which have been studied extensively. Theories of Levels of Processing (Amico and Schaefer, 2020), strategy utilization (Craik and Lockhart, 1972), mental engagement (Coles and Tomporowski, 2008;Kahneman, 1973;Hockey et al, 1986), and other cognitive constructs have addressed conditions that affect the degree to which individuals allocate attentional resources to environmental events. Physical exercise has also been hypothesized to influence attentional allocation.…”

The brain in motion–cognitive effects of simultaneous motor activity

“…The following four of them found no differences between active and resting conditions on memory performance. Two studies assessed cycling on a stationary bike at different intensity levels and durations ( Miles and Hardman, 1998 ; Silvers et al, 2018 ), one used a treadmill running paradigm ( Frith et al, 2017 ) and one used free running ( Amico and Schaefer, 2020 ). One limitation might be that in two of these studies, encoding times were rather short, i.e., Miles and Hardman (1998) used a 3-min encoding time and Amico and Schaefer (2020) used a 9-min encoding time, whereas Frith et al (2017) , and Silvers et al (2018) used encoding times of 15 and 20 min, respectively.…”