The Effect Of Different Intensity Exercise On Undergraduates’ Working Memory

With the rapid development of domestic economy, people’s materiallife condition has improved a lot. When material life is met, people’s focus of attention begins to transfer to spiritual life, with more attentionpays to individual mental health. Mental health includes not only moderate emotional control, proper self-awareness and good interpersonal communication, but also normal intelligence. Generalized cognitive includes all activities related to the intelligence, including attention, memory, thinking, innovation, etc. Previous studies have found that working memory isthe core of the most important factors of cognitive activity, and it provides a platform for all cognitive activities. Therefore, the study on the effect of physical exercise on working memory has important theoreticaland practical significance.A large number of studies have shown that physical exercise has effect on the cognitive activity, but the effect is influenced by exercise intensity. Previous studies have shown that short-term moderate intensity physical exercise can have positive effect on the cognitive activities of exercisers with high intensity of vigorous exercise has the opposite effect on that. As a consequence, this article hypothesizes that (1) the influenceof different intensity exercise on working memory is different;(2) the low and moderate intensity exercise can improve the individual workingmemory, but the degree of improvement is different;(3) the high intensity of vigorous exercise can harm the individual working memory.The study adopts the experimental research methods, through whichwe have selected80undergraduates (M=22.7, SD=22.7) from InnerMongolia Normal University as subjects. Half of them are female andthe rest are male. All participants are not involved in the habit of physical exercise. According to the intensity of the physical exercise, we willdivide the experiment into quiet group, low intensity exercise group, m oderate intensity exercise group and large intensity exercise group. Quietgroup participants were asked to sit for5minutes; Low intensity exercise group participants were asked to try to make their heart rate reach110-120times/min after an exercise of5minutes; Moderate intensity exercise group participants were asked to make their heart rate reach140-150times/min after an exercise of5minutes; High intensity exercise group participants were asked to make their heart rate reach170-180times/min after an exercise of5minutes. We used polar watch machine to monitor the heart rate of the participants. The exercise was running. All subjects took the verbal working memory2-back test and the spatial working memory2-back test. We collected the accuracy and reaction time of all subjects.Experimental results show that (1) For accuracy, different exercise intensity have different effect on two kinds of working memory;(2) Forreaction time, different exercise intensity have different effect on two kinds of working memory. Low intensity exercise can improve the verbaland spatial working memory in the reaction, but the improvement hasno statistical significance: the reaction time of verbal working memory P=0.298>0.05, the reaction time of spatial working memory P=0.608>0.05; Moderate intensity exercise can significantly speed-up the reaction of verbal and spatial working memory, the reaction time of verbalworking memory P=0.04<0.05, the reaction time of spatial workingmemory P=0.034<0.05; High intensity exercise can significantly slow down the reaction of verbal and spatial working memory: the reactiontime of verbal working memory P=0.037<0.05, the reaction time of spatial working memory P=0.047<0.05. The accuracy and reactiontime of verbal and spatial working memory have no significant difference regardless of gender or exercise intensity.