The Effects of Acute Exercise on Memory: Considerations of the Backward Testing Effect

Recent evidence suggests that an acute bout of aerobic exercise prior to encoding improves both short-term (STM) and long-term memory (LTM) performance. However, it is uncertain whether this improvement in LTM is driven by the backward testing effect (BTE), which is the result of increased LTM performance due to retrieving previously encoded information. Seventy-two young adults (37 females) completed a within-subjects, counterbalanced study examining whether the effects of 15-min of vigorous intensity treadmill running on LTM performance for a word list are influenced by the BTE. The BTE was confirmed via greater LTM in the condition including a STM assessment. However, acute exercise did not improve LTM, regardless of whether an earlier STM recall assessment was implemented; exploratory analyses suggest that this effect may be influenced by baseline memory performance. These results suggest that the BTE should be considered when exploring the potential benefits of acute exercise on episodic memory.