Aerobic Fitness Is Associated With Cognitive Control Strategy in Preadolescent Children

This study used conditional accuracy functions (CAF), a method computing the mean accuracy of multiple reaction time (RT) ranges, to investigate the association between aerobic fitness and the utilization of cognitive control strategy during preadolescence. Thirty-eight higher- and lower-fit children were grouped according to their cardiorespiratory capacity (VO2max) and completed a modified flanker task. Seventeen young adults were recruited as a reference group of maturation. The results showed that higher-fit children exhibited an adult-like performance pattern, and demonstrated increased overall response accuracy compared to lower-fit children, with a disproportionally larger increase in individual responses when the time allowed for discriminative processing was constrained. These findings suggest that aerobic fitness is associated with enhanced cognitive control and development of a more proactive control strategy during flanker task in preadolescent children.