Assessing the effect of exercise intensity on cognitive task performance in an exercise video game

Exercise video games encourage people to be more physically active by combining entertainment and physical movement. On the other hand, conventional sedentary video games attract players with challenging mental tasks and puzzles. We address the question as to how performance on such tasks is effected by physical movement when they are placed in the context of an exercise video game. Sports psychology research suggests a general improvement in cognitive task performance during and after physical activity. To assess if these findings can be replicated in the domain of exercise video games, we present an experiment in which we monitor the performance of game players on text comprehension, reaction time, and virtual target shooting tasks while cycling for several minutes on a recumbent bicycle. Our results suggest that the former two tasks are unaffected by exercise intensity, while the ability to perform the latter task is hampered under higher levels of exercise intensity.