Vigorous Exercise Enhances Verbal Fluency Performance in Healthy Young Adults
Background/Objectives: We examined the effects of cardiovascular exercise on verbal fluency using a between-groups design. Methods: Within our experimental (i.e., exercise) group, participants performed phonemic and semantic verbal fluency tasks (VFTs) before, during, and after a vigorous 30 min bou...
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2025-01-01
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| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/15/1/96 |
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| author | Maya M. Khanna Corey L. Guenther Joan M. Eckerson Dion Talamante Mary Elizabeth Yeh Megan Forby Krystal Hopkins Emmali Munger Grace Rauh Shringala Chelluri Courtney Schmidt Isabel Walocha Matthew Sacco |
| author_facet | Maya M. Khanna Corey L. Guenther Joan M. Eckerson Dion Talamante Mary Elizabeth Yeh Megan Forby Krystal Hopkins Emmali Munger Grace Rauh Shringala Chelluri Courtney Schmidt Isabel Walocha Matthew Sacco |
| author_sort | Maya M. Khanna |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Background/Objectives: We examined the effects of cardiovascular exercise on verbal fluency using a between-groups design. Methods: Within our experimental (i.e., exercise) group, participants performed phonemic and semantic verbal fluency tasks (VFTs) before, during, and after a vigorous 30 min bout of cycling. Participants within our control group also completed these VFTs before, during, and after a non-physical activity. We compared the VFT performance of the experimental (exercise) and control (no-exercise) groups of participants in terms of the characteristics of the words that they produced within the VFTs. In addition, we examined these aspects of VFT performance for each participant group across time within the experiment session. Conclusions: From these comparisons, we see that exercise influenced VFT performance. Most notably, participants engaged in exercise changed their VFT performance over time, while control group participants did not. Exercising participants produced more words over the course of their exercise session that contained fewer letters over time and were lower in frequency during and after exercise as compared to before exercise. Additionally, topic switches in the VFTs increased after exercise as compared to before exercise. Participants in the control group did not change their VFT performance over time according to any of these measures. These findings indicate that exercise impacted participants’ lexical access and that these VFT performance changes were not due to practice effects. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-84098209acb44099b612a750865b3183 |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 2076-3425 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-01-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Brain Sciences |
| spelling | doaj-art-84098209acb44099b612a750865b31832025-01-24T13:25:58ZengMDPI AGBrain Sciences2076-34252025-01-011519610.3390/brainsci15010096Vigorous Exercise Enhances Verbal Fluency Performance in Healthy Young AdultsMaya M. Khanna0Corey L. Guenther1Joan M. Eckerson2Dion Talamante3Mary Elizabeth Yeh4Megan Forby5Krystal Hopkins6Emmali Munger7Grace Rauh8Shringala Chelluri9Courtney Schmidt10Isabel Walocha11Matthew Sacco12Department of Psychological Science, Creighton University, Omaha, NE 68178, USADepartment of Psychological Science, Creighton University, Omaha, NE 68178, USADepartment of Exercise Science and Pre-Health Professions, Creighton University, Omaha, NE 68178, USADepartment of Psychological Science, Creighton University, Omaha, NE 68178, USADepartment of Psychological Science, Creighton University, Omaha, NE 68178, USADepartment of Psychological Science, Creighton University, Omaha, NE 68178, USADepartment of Psychological Science, Creighton University, Omaha, NE 68178, USADepartment of Exercise Science and Pre-Health Professions, Creighton University, Omaha, NE 68178, USADepartment of Exercise Science and Pre-Health Professions, Creighton University, Omaha, NE 68178, USADepartment of Psychological Science, Creighton University, Omaha, NE 68178, USADepartment of Psychological Science, Creighton University, Omaha, NE 68178, USADepartment of Psychological Science, Creighton University, Omaha, NE 68178, USADepartment of Exercise Science and Pre-Health Professions, Creighton University, Omaha, NE 68178, USABackground/Objectives: We examined the effects of cardiovascular exercise on verbal fluency using a between-groups design. Methods: Within our experimental (i.e., exercise) group, participants performed phonemic and semantic verbal fluency tasks (VFTs) before, during, and after a vigorous 30 min bout of cycling. Participants within our control group also completed these VFTs before, during, and after a non-physical activity. We compared the VFT performance of the experimental (exercise) and control (no-exercise) groups of participants in terms of the characteristics of the words that they produced within the VFTs. In addition, we examined these aspects of VFT performance for each participant group across time within the experiment session. Conclusions: From these comparisons, we see that exercise influenced VFT performance. Most notably, participants engaged in exercise changed their VFT performance over time, while control group participants did not. Exercising participants produced more words over the course of their exercise session that contained fewer letters over time and were lower in frequency during and after exercise as compared to before exercise. Additionally, topic switches in the VFTs increased after exercise as compared to before exercise. Participants in the control group did not change their VFT performance over time according to any of these measures. These findings indicate that exercise impacted participants’ lexical access and that these VFT performance changes were not due to practice effects.https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/15/1/96exerciseverbal fluencylexical featurescognitive performance |
| spellingShingle | Maya M. Khanna Corey L. Guenther Joan M. Eckerson Dion Talamante Mary Elizabeth Yeh Megan Forby Krystal Hopkins Emmali Munger Grace Rauh Shringala Chelluri Courtney Schmidt Isabel Walocha Matthew Sacco Vigorous Exercise Enhances Verbal Fluency Performance in Healthy Young Adults Brain Sciences exercise verbal fluency lexical features cognitive performance |
| title | Vigorous Exercise Enhances Verbal Fluency Performance in Healthy Young Adults |
| title_full | Vigorous Exercise Enhances Verbal Fluency Performance in Healthy Young Adults |
| title_fullStr | Vigorous Exercise Enhances Verbal Fluency Performance in Healthy Young Adults |
| title_full_unstemmed | Vigorous Exercise Enhances Verbal Fluency Performance in Healthy Young Adults |
| title_short | Vigorous Exercise Enhances Verbal Fluency Performance in Healthy Young Adults |
| title_sort | vigorous exercise enhances verbal fluency performance in healthy young adults |
| topic | exercise verbal fluency lexical features cognitive performance |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/15/1/96 |
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