Does Strenuous Physical Exercise Influence the Attentional Function?

Abstract

This study investigated the influence of strenuous physical exercise on the attentional function by considering the specific example of rugby. Using a group version of the “Stroop and reverse-Stroop test” that was composed of four tasks (Hakoda and Sasaki, 1990) as an index of the attentional function, we compared the pre- and post- attentional function between 12 male university students who participated in a rugby match (rugby group) and 41 male students who attended a classroom lecture (control group). We found that in the control group, the number of correct answers for all four tasks increased, showing a practice effect. In the rugby group, only the Stroop interference task induced an increase of correct answers whereas the reverse-Stroop interference task did not induce any improvements of the performance. These results suggest that rugby related physical exercise improved the control function of the interference from verbal information, but not from color information.