Effects of Acute Aerobic Exercise on Sequentially Administered Cognitive Tasks Reflecting Working Memory Subcomponents and Heart Rate Variability

Although acute aerobic exercise selectively influences specific subcomponents of working memory, whether such benefits transfer to a subsequent cognitive task engaging a different domain remains unclear. Forty-seven participants completed, in randomized order, an exercise condition (10 min of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise) and a control condition, each immediately followed by a visuospatial construction task (the Equilibrio game) and a 2-Back working memory task, with heart rate variability (HRV) recorded throughout. Completion time on the Equilibrio task was significantly shorter following exercise than following control, W = 292.5, z = −2.873, p = .004, rB = −0.481. In contrast, no significant between-condition differences emerged on any behavioral parameter of the 2-Back task, including completion time, accuracy, hit rate, discrimination sensitivity (d′), and response bias (c; all ps > 0.05). During the 2-Back task, however, sympathetic indices (SNS Index, Stress Index, LF/HF ratio) were significantly elevated and parasympathetic/vagal indices (RMSSD, SDNN, PNS Index, HF n.u.) were significantly suppressed following exercise, despite unchanged behavior. These findings indicate that exercise-induced cognitive benefit is task-specific and does not extend to a subsequent task engaging a different working memory subcomponent, even as autonomic activation persists. This dissociation challenges general-arousal accounts of exercise–cognition effects and supports a domain-specific, timing-sensitive framework.