The Relationships between Exercise and Cognitive Ability
Tylor Ghaffari, Genna M. Mashinchi, Evan Jonson, Christa McDiffett, Timothy G. Trammel, Emma L.
Mendes, Erica Lopez, Michelle L. Velazquez, Gary A. Williams, Dawn L. Strongin, & Kelly A. Cotter
Introduction
Background and Previous Research
• The amount of individuals with cognitive decline
has doubled from 20.2 million in 1990 to 43.8
million in 2016 (GBD 2016 Dementia Collaborators,
2019).
• Physical activity habits protect against cognitive
decline:
• Higher frequency and longer duration of
physical activity were associated with better
learning, better delayed recall, and better
retention on the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning
Test (Klaming, Annese, Veltman, & Comijs,
2017).
• More frequent participation in physical activity
was also related to less decline in episodic
memory on the Community Screening
Instrument for Dementia (Wang et al., 2013).
• Those who actively engaged in incidental
physical activity (e.g., unplanned or
unstructured physical activity such as
housework) achieved higher scores on the
Spanish-translated third version of the
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-III;
Sánchez-López et al., 2018).
Purpose and Hypothesis
• The purpose of this study was to examine the
relationship between the frequency of physical
activity and performance on the “Gold Standard”
WAIS-IV (Wechsler, 2008) cognitive assessment.
• We hypothesized that more frequent participation
in physical activity would be associated with higher
cognitive function, as demonstrated by higher
WAIS-IV Full Scale IQ (FSIQ) scores.
Acknowledgments: We would like to thank Arika A.
Harrison and Danielle V. Simpson for their
contributions to this poster.
Healthy Aging Lab - California State University, Stanislaus
Method Discussion
Participants Findings
• 38 participants (M = 12 and F = 26) • Contrary to predictions, there were no significant
• Mage = 80.64 years (SD = 6.14), ranging from 67-89 correlations between cognitive ability and number
of days engaged in light, moderate, or vigorous
• Education levels: 34.6% of participants earned a Master’s degree or higher, 26% earned a Bachelor’s degree,
5% earned an Associates degree, and 8% earned a high school education physical activity (see Figure 1).
• Members of a faith-based, continuing care retirement community with access to exercise facilities and classes • When considering the relationship between
vigorous physical activity frequency and the
Design and Measures
Working Memory Index (WMI) specifically, results
• Independent Variable: Frequency of physical activity as measured by days per week engaged in light,
moderate, or vigorous physical activity showed a moderate positive correlation
approaching statistical significance (r = .32, p =
• Dependent Variable: Cognitive functioning as measured by the WAIS-IV Full Scale IQ score (FSIQ), which is
comprised of 10 subtests (Block Design, Similarities, Digit Span, Vocabulary, Matrix Reasoning, Arithmetic, .052, 95% CI [-.002, .579]). See Figure 2.
Symbol Search, Visual Puzzles, Information, and Coding) • This may suggest that exercise is related to
Procedure some aspects of cognitive functioning, but not
• Demographics and exercise questions and WAIS-IV were administered over two sessions, approximately a necessarily to global cognitive function.
week apart.
Limitations and Future Research
Results • Our results may not be representative of all older
adults, due to our small homogeneous sample of
predominantly wealthy, educated, Christian
Predictor Variable Pearson’s r with FSIQ [95%CI] p-value
participants.
Light Exercise Frequency -.06 [-.37, .26] .714 • Participants self-reported their frequency of
(M = 3.87, SD = 2.68) exercise per week, which may not accurately
Moderate Exercise Frequency -.11 [-.41, .22] .522 reflect their actual activity patterns.
(M = 3.42; SD = 2.40) • Future research should compare self-reported
Vigorous Exercise Frequency .22 [-.11, .50] .180 exercise frequency with recorded data from
(M = 1.00; SD = 2.03) exercise monitoring devices in a large
representative sample of adults.
150
Key Takeaways
140
• Our results suggest that engaging in frequent
Working Memory Index
130
vigorous physical activity may be protective against
120 working memory decline, which may have
110 important implications for how we age.
100
90
80
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