Investigating the Nature of the Cognitive Benefits Associated with Fitness and Sporting Engagement

There are many studies showing fitness and/or sporting skill is associated with better cognitive performance. One mechanism proposed to explain these effects is increased neural plasticity, meaning better cognitive performance could be the result of a more trainable brain. This theory was tested by looking at the initial performance and the performance following training on a visual search task for individuals engaged in sports and for control individuals. Analysis of variance for speed of task performance with factors of group, gender and sport for both speed of responses on the task and improvement in response times with practice showed no significant effects (analysis of variance F < 1.9, p > 0.175 for all group effects). The only significant difference was a reduced difference between specific and non-specific learning on the task, likely indicative of reduced non-specific learning in some of the sports groups (runners/controls, ANOVA F(1, 43) = 5.484, p = 0.024, ηp2 = 0.113 a medium effect size; and male baseball, runners and controls F(2, 33) = 3.427, p = 0.044, ηp2 = 0.172 a large effect size), possibly due to previous improvement because of fitness or sporting skill. These findings suggest a need for specificity in terms of selecting sport training when trying to produce cognitive benefits and a need for better assessment of sport-specific and sport/fitness-general effects on cognitive performance.