Physical and Mental Activity and Their Effects on Short Term Recall and Task Anxiety

Abstract

Stress and anxiety impact long term and short term recall, as people who experienced stress showed a decreased performance on word recall task in past studies. Mindful meditation is associated with reduced stress and an increased ability to concentrate. Physical activity is hypothesized to contribute to cognitive ability. This study examines how meditation and exercise impact acute testing anxiety, and works to explore manipulated anxiety’s direct, yet conjectural, effects on short term recall. Participants filled out a word search puzzle, and then participated in either a short exercise activity, meditation activity, or passively waited. Afterwards, their heart rate (HR), skin conductance (GSR), and blood pressure (BP) were measured while they were, without prior warning, asked to recall the words from the word search to determine their stress response and recall performance. A one-way ANOVA resulted in significant changes for heart rate, but not for skin conductance or blood pressure. There was no significant difference in the number of words recalled based on experimental treatment, but observational trends suggest that more intensive studies could find meditation to be effective in impacting short term recall. Overall, however, we cannot confirm a significant correlation regarding the effect of meditation and exercise on short term recall.