Abstract
Physical activity may improve cognitive control and episodic memory. Cognitive control could exert positive or negative influences on episodic memory. This study aimed to test whether physical activity modulated the effect of proactive and reactive control on episodic memory. Participants reported their physical activity in the past week, encoded episodic memory incidentally in proactive and reactive conditions, and subsequently retrieved their memories of items and sources. Subsequent item memory was better when items were encoded in proactive vs. reactive condition. Smaller condition difference in subsequent item memory was related to better cognitive control ability. Cognitive control completely mediated the relation between physical activity and the condition difference in subsequent item memory. Additionally, condition difference in subsequent source memory was negatively related to cognitive control. After controlling for cognitive control, greater physical activity was positively related to the difference in subsequent source memory between proactive and reactive conditions. Altogether, the findings suggested that physical activity modulated the effect of proactive and reactive control on subsequent item memory through improving cognitive control ability, but it was independent of cognitive control for subsequent source memory.
Highlights
Physical activity has received much attention as a way to prevent cognitive declines due to the close relations between physical activity and cognitive abilities (Hillman et al, 2008; Lambourne and Tomporowski, 2010; Donnelly et al, 2016)
Physical activity might affect the differences in subsequent item memory between proactive and reactive conditions through improving individual cognitive control ability, but the effect of physical activity on subsequent source memory was independent of cognitive control ability
Through mediation analyses, we found that the relation between physical activity and the condition differences in subsequent item memory was completely mediated by individual variation in cognitive control ability
Summary
Physical activity has received much attention as a way to prevent cognitive declines due to the close relations between physical activity and cognitive abilities (Hillman et al, 2008; Lambourne and Tomporowski, 2010; Donnelly et al, 2016). Physical activity has been found to be positively related to information processing efficiency, attention, memory, and cognitive control abilities (Buck et al, 2008; Chaddock et al, 2011; Scudder et al, 2015; Drollette et al, 2016). These previous studies have focused on the relations between physical activity and the functions of a single cognitive system. Few previous studies have investigated whether physical activity affects the interactions between cognitive systems. The current study sought to fill this gap by investigating whether physical activity modulated the effect of cognitive control on episodic memory
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