Vigilance & Cognitive Flexibility: The Effect of Martial Arts Experience on Task Switching

Martial Arts can be considered both a sport and a therapy, combining physical exercise with intense periods of concentration (similar to meditation). Previous research suggests that both exercise and meditation can lead to improvements in executive functions (i.e., cognitive flexibility) in adult participants. Results from our lab have previously suggested that martial artists show improvements in the alerting attentional network - a measure of vigilance. The current research aims to investigate the impact of Martial Arts training on a task-switching protocol to measure both vigilance and cognitive flexibility in typical adults. Here we recruited adult martial artists with at least two years of experience, and control participants with no experience. Participants had to respond to either the shape or the colour of a figure in pure and mixed blocks to provide measures of mixing costs (sustained vigilance) and switching costs (cognitive flexibility). Results demonstrated martial artists did not differ from controls in the pure block, but displayed improved performance in the mixed block, revealing an improvement in mixing costs (vigilance). These benefits in vigilance mirror those previously found in attentional tasks, providing convergent evidence on the impact of Martial Arts training on vigilance.