| Physical fitness is associated with overall health and well-being. Increasing evidence, primarily among older adults, supports the link between physical health and cognitive health, particularly with subset of cognitive processes known as executive control functioning. Executive control functioning is needed to complete complex, goal-directed activities and involves the capacity to initiate and discontinue behaviors appropriately, to monitor and modify actions as needed, to plan future behavior when faced with novel tasks and situations, and to anticipate future outcomes. To date, researchers studying the link between physical fitness and executive control functioning have largely focused on older adults and have defined physical fitness using only one estimate of cardiovascular fitness or body composition. New research is needed to further examine the relationship between multiple components of physical fitness and executive control functioning in younger persons. The present study sought to assess the relationship between multiple measures of physical fitness and executive control functioning in a sample of 131 college students (mean age= 20 years; 74.0% women) while controlling for participants' sex and psychological distress levels. Using three multiple regression analyses, predictor variables included objective measures of cardiovascular fitness, muscle strength and endurance, and flexibility, two estimates of body composition, self-reported physical activity and psychological distress, and participants' sex. Criterion variables included three standardized measures of executive control functioning: Trail Making Test-B, Stroop Color and Word Test-Interference Score, and Wisconsin Card Sorting Test-Perseverative Errors. The results of the present study demonstrated that physical fitness measures were not predictive of executive control functioning on any of the three cognitive tests. As the current study used multiple measures of physical fitness and executive control functioning, it provides additional support that within young adults, physical fitness is not related to executive control functioning. Although some of the fitness measures were correlated, they were not redundant; therefore, future studies should begin using multiple measures of fitness when investigating the influence of physical fitness on executive control functioning. Future studies may also begin focusing more ecologically valid predictor and outcome measures among persons who have clinically meaningful issues related to physical fitness and/or executive control functioning. |
