Immediate effects of physical activity on motor cognitive function in healthy young adults: A pre-test post-test quasi experimental study

Abstract

Background: Physical activity influences cognitive function which is already established by several literatures. Exercise increases attention and performance on cognitive tasks, but the immediate effect of exercise on motor-cognitive function is unknown. Aim: Our aim was to find out the immediate effect of physical activity on motor-cognitive function in healthy adults. Materials and Methods: Twenty-five young males and females aged between 18 and 25 years were recruited by convenient sampling technique. Anthropometric measurement was obtained from the consented participants. For measuring the motor-cognitive function, memory cognitive skill game, an android-based mobile application, was used. The normality of the data was established by Shapiro–Wilk test. As the data follow normal distribution, the descriptive statistics were expressed in mean ± standard deviation and paired t-test was used to report pre- and postchange scores. Results: The mean age, height, weight, and body mass index of students were 22.48 ± 2.24 years, 163.25 ± 9.32 cm, 61.56 ± 9.32 kg, and 23.14 ± 3.6 kg/m2, respectively. Overall, the mean pre- and postphysical activity scores were 44.54 ± 12.43 and 48.71 ± 12.40, respectively, with a significant difference (P = 0.005) between them. Gender-wise analysis revealed a significant change among the female participants (P = 0.002) but not among the male participants (P = 0.266). Conclusion: This study concluded that motor-cognitive function improves immediately after exercise.