Multisensory Perception, Verbal, Visuo-spatial and Motor Working Memory Modulation After a Single Open- or Closed-Skill
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Multisensory Perception, Verbal, Visuo-spatial and Motor Working Memory Modulation After a Single Open- or Closed-Skill Exercise Session in Children Jessica O’Brien 1 & Giovanni Ottoboni 2 & Alessia Tessari 2 & Annalisa Setti 1 Received: 11 February 2020 / Accepted: 28 August 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Physical activity presents clear benefits for children’s cognition. This study examined the effect of a single session of open- and closed-skill exercise on multisensory perception, i.e. the ability to appropriately merge inputs from different sensory modalities, and on working memory (verbal, visuo-spatial and motor working memory) in 51 children (aged 6–8 years). Using a semirandomised pre-post design, participants completed a range of cognitive tasks immediately before and after an exercise session or a classroom sedentary activity. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the three groups (open-skill, n = 16; closed-skill, n = 16; classroom activity, n = 19). Exercise, but not usual classroom activity, improved children’s multisensory perception, with no difference between exercise types. Results also revealed that a single open-skill session produced verbal working memory (digit span) benefits; a closed-skill exercise session benefitted motor working memory. While the relatively small number of participants should be acknowledged as a limitation, these findings contribute to the emerging evidence for selective cognitive benefits of exercise and show, for the first time in children, that multisensory processing sensitivity is improved by exercise. Keywords Exercise . Open-skill . Closed-skill . Children . Multisensory processing . Working memory
Introduction The evidence for the positive effects of physical activity on cognitive functioning (Hillman et al. 2008) coincides with a time of global concern regarding the increasingly sedentary lifestyle of children (Karnik and Kanekar 2015). Acute exercise (i.e. a single exercise bout) represents an intervention strategy to promote children’s cognitive development (Diamond and Lee 2011), as single exercise sessions can easily be implemented into children’s daily lives, especially within schools (Masini et al. 2019). Yet there is a dearth of research on acute exercise on children (Ellemberg and St-LouisDeschênes 2010), and questions remain open on how to inform practical guidelines on the optimal exercises for
* Annalisa Setti [email protected] 1
School of Applied Psychology, University College Cork, North Mall Campus, Cork, Ireland
2
Department of Psychology, Bologna University, Bologna, Italy
cognitive enhancement based on current knowledge of brain benefits of exercise (Hötting and Röder 2013). Different exercise types have different effects on the brain, with emerging experimental evidence indicating that cognitively stimulating exercise (particularly open-skill exercise) may represent the optimal exercise type to improve cognition (Pesce 2009). Open-skill exercise involves an unpredictable exercise environment (e
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