EXTRA PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS

This study aimed at investigating whether the Extra Physical Activity has a chronic impact on the psychological functions such as self-esteem and the ability to storage information. In the recent literature the acute effect of the intense cardiovascular activity has been already shown to enhance the cognitive functions. 4 classes of a Rimini school participated to the study. In total 76 students filled the self-esteem questionnaires, performed a Free Memory Recall Test. The students were divided according to gender, self-esteem and EPA. The MANOVA were run in order to test the memory skills for gender, self-esteem and EPA score Data analysis show EPA male participants reported a higher score in self-esteem compared with EPA female students and males who did not take part to EPA. The MANOVA for the two memory tasks highlighted significate interaction only for Self-esteem score. Difference were also detected in the Gender and Gender X Self-esteem. The post-hoc ANOVA in Memory task 1showed a significant interaction for Self-esteem. No differences emerged from the post-hoc ANOVA for self-esteem in Memory task 2. Students with high self-esteem performed memory 1 task better than low self-esteem. The male students seemed to have higher self-esteem scores than their counterpart that did not participated to the extra activities. As well as differences emerged between males and female who practiced the EPA. The memory tests results did not revealed differences between the EPA and non-EPA groups, but student with high Self-esteem were able to remember more words than low self-esteem students.