Abstract
We evaluated the effects of exercise on proactive memory interference. Study 1 (n = 88) employed a 15-min treadmill walking protocol, while Study 2 (n = 88) included a 15-min bout of progressive maximal exertion treadmill exercise. Each study included four distinct groups, in which groups of 22 participants each were randomly assigned to: (a) exercise before memory encoding, (b) a control group with no exercise, (c) exercise during memory encoding, and (d) exercise after memory encoding (i.e., during memory consolidation). We used the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) to assess proactive memory interference. In both studies, the group that exercised prior to memory encoding recalled the most words from list B (distractor list) of the RAVLT, though group differences were not statistically significant for Study 1 (walking exercise) (p = 0.521) or Study 2 (high-intensity exercise) (p = 0.068). In this sample of young adults, high intensity exercise prior to memory encoding showed a non-significant tendency to attenuate impairments in recall attributable to proactive memory interference. Thus, future work with larger samples is needed to clarify potential beneficial effects of exercise for reducing proactive memory interference.
Highlights
The average number of words recalled correctly by participants in the exercise before encoding group was higher than all other groups for both Study 1—Walking and Learning (6.64 ± 1.33 words; Figure 1) and Study 2—Jogging and Learning (7.318 ± 2.32 words; Figure 2)
Our main finding was that participants who exercised before memory encoding, compared to other temporal periods and no exercise, had the highest absolute number of words recalled, though this was not a statistically significant finding, and a tendency toward this finding was only evident among those participants engaged in moderate to high intensity exercise
Neuroimaging studies corroborate the crucial role of the PFC in verbally processing novel information, which is deemed to be especially vulnerable to Proactive interference (PI) distortion [5,6,7,8,9,10]
Summary
Proactive interference (PI) may be defined as a fundamental inefficiency to generate or converge on accurate responses following the presentation of novel learning stimuli. If exposed to and asked to learn (recall) two successive word lists (List A and B), the performance on the second list (List B) may be hindered by the proactive interference effect of having to learn the first list (List A). The risk of PI is exacerbated when learning and target stimuli share similar attributes, and when the volume of information increases preceding the salient target [1]. Recall accuracy may be directly influenced by the semantic similarity of the stimuli. When learned materials resemble new material (i.e., word lists), the rate of memory-trace degradation and convergence error is magnified [1]. Research suggests retention is inversely proportional to the number of precursory exposure trials [2]
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