Effects of Acute Exercise on Verbal, Mathematical, and Spatial Insight Creativity

Abstract

This experiment was designed to accommodate the diversified verbal, mathematical, and spatial skills of young adults, which have not yet to be collectively evaluated in research projects focused on acute exercise and creativity among college students. While emerging research suggests that acute moderate-intensity exercise may influence human creativity, creativity during and after exercise has not been experimentally investigated. Such differences are plausible, as previous work demonstrates that memory can be differentially influenced based on whether the memory task occurs during or after exercise. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the effects of acute moderate‐intensity treadmill walking, for 15 min, on verbal, mathematical, and spatial insight creativity performance while considering the timing of the exercise and creativity tasks. Among a sample of 20 undergraduate students, all completed three randomized laboratory visits in this within-subjects design: control condition, insight problem-solving following exercise, and insight problem-solving during exercise. They also completed six insight creativity tasks (two verbal, two mathematical, and two spatial tasks) per visit, with the order of task-presentation randomized and counterbalanced across the three visits. Average insight creativity scores were similar across the three exercise manipulations: That is, verbal insight [F(2, 18) = 0.689, P = 0.51], mathematical insight [F(2, 18) = 0.033, P = 0.97], and spatial insight [F(2, 18) = 1.0, P = 0.38] performance were not statistically significant across the three visits. Thus, moderate-intensity acute exercise may not appreciably influence verbal, mathematical or spatial insight creativity.