V-033 | Competition for Cognitive Resources: Effects of Physical Activity and Novelty on Memory and Creativity in Secondary School Students

Cognition, Behavior, and Memory
Author: Alejo Ramiro Barbuzza | Email: barbuzza.alejo@gmail.com

Alejo Ramiro Barbuzza^1°2°, Pedro Benedetti^2°,Fabricio Ballarini^1°2°

^1° Instituto de Biología Celular y Neurociencia “Prof. E. De Robertis” (IBCN), Facultad de Medicina, UBA-CONICET, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
^2° Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires (ITBA), Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Physical activity (PA) provides a range of benefits for physiological and mental health, as well as cognition. However, the amount of research conducted on healthy humans, particularly adolescents, in this area is limited. To address this gap, we aimed to study the role of PA on memory and creativity in secondary school students within natural environments, specifically schools, where there is an intimate relationship between cognition and PA.

Our previous research demonstrated that novelty improved the recall of long-term graphic memory (Rey Complex Figure) and performance in creativity tasks (Alternative Uses Task – AUT) when it was associated with novelty immediately before these tasks. However, this improvement largely depended on the order in which the tasks were presented. The AUT task showed improvement regardless of the order, while the Rey figure only improved when it was recalled first, indicating that the cognitive resources provided by novelty are limited.

The results obtained in PA suggest a similar competition for resources, albeit with a subtle difference. The cognitive resources provided by the physical education class, immediately before these tasks, appear to be more limited than those provided by novelty, as improvements were only observed in the task tested first, regardless of its nature.