The Effect of Exercise Intensity on Affective and Repetition Priming in Middle-Aged Adults

Cristina Perez-Rojo, Jennifer A. Rieker and Soledad Ballesteros ()
Additional contact information
Cristina Perez-Rojo: Departamento de Psicología Básica II, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, C/Juan del Rosal, 10, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Jennifer A. Rieker: Departamento de Psicología Básica II, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, C/Juan del Rosal, 10, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Soledad Ballesteros: Departamento de Psicología Básica II, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, C/Juan del Rosal, 10, 28040 Madrid, Spain

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 16, 1-13

Abstract: Previous research has shown that physical exercise improves memory. In the present study, we investigated the possible effects of the intensity of physical exercise as a function of the affective valence of words on implicit memory. In the study, 79 young adult volunteers were randomly assigned to perform moderate- (50% VO 2 max) or high-intensity exercise (80% VO 2 max) on a stationary bike. Once the required exercise intensity was achieved, participants performed an affective and repetition priming task concurrently with the physical exercise. Both groups showed similar repetition priming. The moderate-intensity exercise group showed affective priming with positive words, while affective priming was not found in the high-intensity exercise group. Facilitation occurred in both groups when a negative target word was preceded by a positive prime word. Our results suggest that the positive effect of physical exercise on memory is modulated by the affective valence of the stimuli. It seems that moderate-intensity exercise is more beneficial for implicit memory than high-intensity exercise.

Keywords: affective priming; implicit memory; exercise intensity; middle-aged adults; physical exercise; repetition priming (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/16/9873/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/16/9873/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:16:p:9873-:d:885099

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().