GAINESVILLE, Fla. – A new study looking at the impact of multi-tasking while exercising has shown that cognitive ability increases when doing so.
The findings were published in the May 13 edition of the journal PLOS ONE.
Researchers at the University of Florida challenged the notion that multi-tasking causes both or one of the activities to suffer. They conducted a study of older adults who completed cognitive tasks while riding stationary bicycles.
Not only did the participants’ cycling speed improve, but it was at no cost to their cognitive performance.
Initially the researchers were trying to determine the degree Parkinson’s disease patient’s performance was impacted by multi-tasking. They had a group of healthy older adults participate as a control group.
Both groups were then asked to complete a series of increasingly difficult cognitive tests while cycling.
To their surprise the cycling speed increased about 25 percent while doing easy cognitive tasks, but did slow when more difficult tasks were presented. Then, the hardest tasks brought the speeds back up.
The conclusion is that combining easier cognitive tasks with physical activity may be the way to get people to exercise more vigorously.
This will be the topic of further research at the University of Florida.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0125470