Age and physical activity effects on reaction time and digit symbol substitution performance in cognitively active...

University professors (N = 56), divided into two age groups (< 50 years and > 50 years) and two physical activity level groups (high and low), were tested on three tasks requiring increasingly complex cognitive processing--simple reaction time (SRT), choice reaction time (CRT), and on a digit symbol substitution test (DSST). A significant main effect for exercise, with high active subjects performing better than low active subjects, was found for SRT (p < .001) and CRT (p < .01) but not for DSST (p < .09). Significant main effects for age, with younger subjects performing better than older subjects, were found on DSST (p < .01) and CRT (p < .05) but not for SRT (p < .09). The observation that the effect of age was more pronounced with increasing task complexity is consistent with previous research. However, the tendency for exercise effects to decrease with increasing task complexity is not consistent with former findings, suggesting that perhaps the controlled high level of cognitive activity of subjects in this study may have offset the usual effects of exercise on information processing speed. No significant Age x Activity Level interactions were found on any of the dependent raw score data. However, compared to normative scores of the population at large, there was a slight increase in DSST percentile ranks with age for the older aerobically active professors, whereas a decrease occurred for the inactive subjects.