Acute and chronic exercise effects on attentional control in older road cyclists

Research on visual attention control of older road cyclists, who represent a subgroup of traffic participants, is still scarce and studies on their attentional performance while cycling are completely lacking.

The present study assessed whether attention control performance of older individuals with a history of participation in road cycling is affected by concomitant cycling exercise. Acute exercise effects were also analyzed in co-aged aerobically trained and sedentary noncyclists to assess whether the acute exercise-cognition relationship is moderated by individual differences induced by chronic sport practice versus sedentary lifestyle.

Sixteen 60- to 80-year-old cyclists and 32 age-matched noncyclists (16 endurance athletes and 16 sedentary individuals) performed a go/no-go reaction time task in which visual attention was cued by means of spatial cues of different sizes followed by compound stimuli with local and global target features.

Older cyclists showed commonalities with and differences from other aerobically trained athletes. Both trained groups, when compared to sedentary individuals, showed shorter reaction time (RT) during physical exercise and a smaller RT disadvantage for unexpected local targets at short stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA). This expectancy-driven RT effect was stable across SOAs only in the case of cyclists.

Results suggest that chronic long-term aerobic training may lead to favorable conditions for the occurrence of a facilitation effect during acute exercise and for a more efficient use of available resources on attentional tasks involving executive control. These results highlight the importance of considering the effects of aerobic exercise for supporting safe on-road behavior.