The Effect Of Attentional Strategy On Subjective Experience And Future Physical Activity

The present study aims at exploring the impact of attentional strategies on the subjective experience of participants during and after a single bout of physical activity(PA)and its predictive effect on subsequent exercise intention and PA in order to improve the subjective experience during and after PA,increase people who are physically inactivity of their exercise intention,and then change their PA.This study was divided into two parts.The purpose of Study 1 was to explore the influence of different attentional strategies on the subjective experience of a single bout of PA;the purpose of Study 2 was to explore whether the subjective experience generated from a single bout of PA can predict participants’ exercise intention and consequent actual PA behavior.In Study 1,24 physically inactive collegiate students were selected through International Physical Activity Questionnaire-Short form(IPAQ-S)as participants.Within-subjects experimental design was employed.All participants did 4 sessions of moderate-intensity aerobic running(6.5km/h)on a treadmill.Each running session(excluding warm-up and relax part)lasted for 15 minutes.During running,participants were asked to use a different attention strategy each time.Affective valences and ratings of perceived exertion(RPE)were measured during PA;affective responses(measured with PANAS)and enjoyment to PA were also measured before and after PA immediately.Taking attentional strategy and measurement time as within-group factors,two-way repeated measure ANOVAs were employed.Greenhouse-Geisser correction was used when the sphericity assumption was violated.Results showed that the main effect of attentional strategy on during-PA affective valence is significant(F(2.28,52.40)= 4.43,p =.013),and the affective valence of external-dissociative attentional strategy was more positive than that of external-associative.The main effect of attentional strategy on RPE was significant(F(1.79,41.35)= 4.44,p =.021),and RPE of external-dissociative attentional strategy was lower than that of external-associative.The interaction between attentional strategy and measurement time on negative affect was significant(F(3,66)= 4.28,p =.008),and the negative affect after exercise using the external-dissociative attentional strategy was significantly lower than that before exercise.The main effect of measurement time on positive affect was significant(F(1,23)= 12.26,p =.002),which indicated that no matter which attentional strategy was used,positive affect would be significantly improved after exercise.The interaction between attentional strategy and measurement time on enjoyment experience was significant(F(3,69)=7.61,p <.001),and that both external-dissociative and internal-dissociative strategy can significantly improve the participants’ enjoyment of PA after exercise.Above results suggested that the use of external-dissociative attentional strategy can effectively improve the subjective experience during and after exercise.Based on Study 1,Study 2 further explored the predictive effect of subjective experience of PA on exercise intention and subsequent PA behavior.Using prospective research design,64 physically inactive collegiate students were selected by using IPAQ-S.They took a single bout of the same moderate-intensity treadmill running as in Study 1.Subjective experience of PA was measured as the same as Study 1;exercise intention before and instantly after the intervention were measured;the amount of PA before and one week after the intervention were also measured.Taking the subjective experience during and instantly after the exercise intervention as the predictive variables,the post-test of exercise intention and the amount of PA behavior as the dependent variables respectively,two regression models were conducted.Results showed that subjective experience during and after physical activity can significantly predict exercise intention(F(4,58)= 5.39,p <.001)and subsequent PA(F(4,58)= 3.90,p =.004),and subjective experience explained 31.7%and 25.2% of variance of exercise intention and PA,respectively.Among them,negative affect after exercise negatively predicted exercise intention and physical activity,enjoyment after exercise positively predicted exercise intention and PA,and positive affect after exercise positively predicted exercise intention.It is suggested that the affective response after exercise is of great significance to the promotion of exercise intention and subsequent PA behavior.Conclusion: 1)the external-dissociative attentional strategy during exercise can improve the affective experience,reduce negative affective response and enhance positive affective response.2)Subjective experience of a single-bout of physical activity can effectively predict participants’ exercise intention and future physical activity behavior.