Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

There is conflicting evidence regarding the effect of acute physical exercise on peoples ability to memorise declarativeinformation. Some studies have found that exercising before learning improves memorisation, while others have foundan adverse effect. We measured memorisation in 70 recruits for the Special Forces unit of the Dutch army during theirfirst week of training. Recruits used a computer-guided learning system to study the names of locations on a map directlybefore and directly after a high-intensity speed march. In the learning session following the speed march, responses werefaster but less accurate than before, particularly at the start of the session. We fitted a computational cognitive model ofhuman memory to the responses made in each learning session to obtain a continuous index of memorisation. This indexshowed a small improvement after the speed march, suggesting that memory representations formed after high-intensityphysical exercise were slightly more stable.