Improved response inhibition induced by attentional capture is associated with physical activity

Hao Zhu; Jiuyang Xu; Yue Zheng; Guiping Jiang; Xinyi Huang; Xiaohuan Tan; Xueping Wu

doi:10.7717/peerj.14083

Improved response inhibition induced by attentional capture is associated with physical activity

PeerJ. 2022 Sep 26:10:e14083. doi: 10.7717/peerj.14083. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Hao Zhu¹, Jiuyang Xu², Yue Zheng³, Guiping Jiang^{4

5}, Xinyi Huang¹, Xiaohuan Tan⁴, Xueping Wu¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Psychology, Shanghai University of Sport, Shanghai, China.
² Tongda College, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Yangzhou, China.
³ School of Physical Education, Jiangsu Vocational and Technical College of Economics and Trade, Nanjing, China.
⁴ School of Physical Education and Training, Shanghai University of Sport, Shanghai, Shanghai, China.
⁵ School of Physical Education, Harbin University, Harbin, China.

Abstract

The ability to stop a response promptly when a stop signal is presented is named response inhibition. It is generally accepted that the process of response inhibition requires a subject to pay attention to the stop instruction and then cancel the action. A wealth of converging evidence suggests that physical activity (PA) can promote response inhibition, but the potential contributions of attentional capture to the relationship between PA and response inhibition are currently unknown. In this study, the standard stop-signal task (SST) and two novel versions of the SST were used to solve this gap. A total of 58 college students were divided into a higher PA group and a lower PA group, respectively. In Experiment 1, the classical SST determined that the participants in the higher PA group displayed a significantly faster stop-signal reaction time (SSRT) than those in the lower PA group. Experiment 2 separated the attentional capture in the SST and revealed that the participants in the higher PA group could detect the signal faster than those in the lower PA group. Experiment 3 further added a stop signal to Experiment 2 and demonstrated that the participants in the higher PA group could more effectively deploy attentional resources to complete the task. Overall, these findings indicate that PA is positively associated with response inhibition and that the positive relationship is associated with effective allocation of attentional resources for faster attentional capture.

Keywords: Attentional capture; Inhibitory control; Physical activity; Response inhibition; Stop signal task.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Humans
Psychomotor Performance* / physiology
Reaction Time / physiology

Grants and funding

This research was supported by grants from The Program for Overseas High-level talents at Shanghai Institutions of Higher Learning (No. TP2020063). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.