Effect Of Acute Aerobic Exercise On The Inhibition Of Overweight Adolescents

Adolescents overweight has become one of the worldwide public health problems to be solved, which not only enhance the rate of adolescent physical problems, but also bring a lot of negative impact on their cognitive development. Studies have shown that overweight adolescents have kinds of cognitive and behavioral defects related to their weak inhibition, such as poor academic performance, difficulties on dieting. Inhibitory control is a key component of human cognitive function, which plays an crucial role in self-restraint and dieting. How to effectively improve the inhibition of overweight adolescents is the key to reduce the cognitive and behavioral defects. With the developing studies of aerobic exercise’s benefits on human body, general population’s inhibition can be enhanced by acute aerobic exercise was confirmed by a large number of mature research. But the study on overweight adolescents is still in the exploratory stage. Therefore, how’s the different performance of inhibition between the overweight adolescents and normal-weight adolescents? What are the effects of Aerobic exercise on enhancing overweight adolescents’ inhibition? It has practical value and social significance to solve these problems.This study adopted the method of behavioral experiments in Psychology. Inhibition function was finely divided into response inhibition and interference suppression. This study first examined the differences of inhibition performance between overweight adolescents and normal-weight adolescents, based on which we further explored the effect of acute aerobic exercise on the inhibition of overweight adolescents. Experiment one tested the inhibition of overweight adolescents and normal-weight adolescents. Classic Go/Nogo task was used to examine the response inhibition and Flanker task to examine interference suppression. Results showed that overweight adolescents exhibited lower correct rate(p = 0.046) and a slower reaction(p < 0.001) on response inhibition; slower reaction time(p < 0.001) on interference suppression. It verified the results of previous studies that overweight adolescents have weaker inhibition. Based on the results of experiment one, the experiment two further explored the benefits of aerobic exercise on overweight adolescents’ inhibition. 60 overweight adolescents were randomly assigned to the intervention group and the control group. The intervention group did a 20 minutes’ moderate-intensity aerobic exercise, while the control group reading at the equal duration. Use the same two tasks in experiment one to test their inhibition. The main results showed:(1) Intervention group had a significantly higher Nogo correct rate in response suppression after exercise(p = 0.006), and the trend increased. The Go reaction time was significantly faster(p = 0.001).(2) Intervention group had a significantly higher correct rate in interference suppression after exercise(p = 0.011), and showed a significantly improvement(p = 0.040).Conclusion: It indicates that overweight adolescents showed weaker response inhibition and interference suppression; moderate acute aerobic exercise played an important role in enhancing the accuracy of overweight adolescents’ interference suppression and response inhibition. Acute aerobic exercise can effectively improve the inhibition of overweight adolescents.