Written: July 1, 2022
Hello reader,
For today’s blog, I wanted to do an analysis of a Taiwanese study, observing cognitive function in both open motor skill athletes and closed motor skill athletes. The study is titled, “Type of physical exercise and inhibitory function in older adults: An event-related potential study” and is by Chung-Ju Huang, Peng-Chun Lin, Chiao-Ling Hung, Yu-KaiChang, and Tsung-MinHung of the University of Taipei. As you may have read in previous blogs, the concept of an “open motor skill sport” and “closed motor skill sport” is fundamental to the purpose of my project. My goal is to prove why fencing improves one’s mind, which is an open motor skill sport.
Purpose:
The purpose of the study was to observe inhibitory function in older adults who participated in both open and closed motor skill sports. The inhibitory function is the ability to control responses through reasoning and attention. The study type mentioned in the paper is a “cross-sectional study.” A cross-sectional study is an observational study where participants are analyzed at a given time.
Methods:
Since the study looked at older exercisers, they used exercisers with a mean age of 69 and categorized them into open motor skill, closed motor skill, and irregular exercise groups. In my own project, it will be necessary to define an age and have a control group of non-athletes. The study doesn’t detail how long the respective athletes participated in their sports. This is important because if athletes have trained consistently till old age, the effect of an open sport should be more prevalent.
The method used was a flanker test, which tests attention and inhibitory control. The Eriksen Flanker Task consists of a target in the middle that is “flanked” by 3 types of nontarget stimuli. The participant must press the left or right arrow key based on the target’s direction.
Erisken Flanker Task With Arrows
Results:
Those who were regular exercisers had a faster reaction time compared to irregular exercisers. For the open-skill exerciser group, the peak amplitude was larger at the vertex site rather than the frontal site. This is why it is necessary to have consistency in the type of athlete within the open motor group, such as fencers. However, there were no differences between the closed-skill and irregular exercise groups.
Conclusions/Broader Implications:
Overall, if older people want the most increased neural efficiency and minimize risks of cognitive decline, they should partake in open motor exercises that involve cognitive abilities. It is clear that my hypothesis of open motor skill athletes having an increased neural efficiency is true. However, I would expand this project by making all of the open and closed skill athletes from one sport each to create more consistency. One of the major takeaways from this study is the method of a flanker test. This method may be most effective as one must respond to stimuli “flanked” by irrelevant stimuli. The original version of the task used letters rather than arrows.
Online Flanker Task using letters
Flanker Task results showing MY reaction time
Surprisingly, I found an online Eriksen Flanker test that was very useful and is an option as a method for my own study. Essentially, there was a series of five letters and if the middle letter is a V/B I click the L key, and if the middle letter is an X/C, I click the A key. In conclusion, the method of the Flanker task is a viable method to test inhibitory control.
Surprisingly, I found an online Eriksen Flanker test that was very useful and is an option as a method for my own study. Essentially, there was a series of five letters and if the middle letter is a V/B I click the L key, and if the middle letter is an X/C, I click the A key. In conclusion, the method of the Flanker task is a viable method to test inhibitory control.
The study analyzed: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S146902921300160X
Type of physical exercise and inhibitory function in older adults: An event-related potential study
Eriksen Flanker test explanation:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/eriksen-flanker-task
Video explaining Eriksen Flanker test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKuYVFgyWf8
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/eriksen-flanker-task
Video explaining Eriksen Flanker test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKuYVFgyWf8