Aerobic exercise has been identified as an effective strategy for transiently enhancing inhibitory control, an ability to suppress irrelevant distractors while focusing on relevant information in facilitating the implementation of goal‐directed behavior. The purpose of this study was to employ a go/no‐go version of the redundant‐target task and event‐related potential to further determine whether inhibitory control at the perceptual and response levels as well as their underlying processing capacity and neuroelectric alterations are differentially affected by a single bout of aerobic exercise. Twenty‐seven young adults completed the redundant‐target task while electroencephalogram was recorded before and after one 20‐min bout of moderate‐intensity aerobic exercise and a sitting control condition on separate days in counterbalanced order. Although behavioral outcomes of mean‐level performance did not differ between intervention conditions, time‐related decreases in processing capacity for the faster responses were only observed following rest. Aerobic exercise resulted in maintained P3b amplitude from pretest to posttest for all trial types while decreased P3b amplitude from pretest to posttest during single‐target and redundant‐target trials was observed following rest. Further, the time‐related changes in P3b amplitude were positively correlated with improvements in task performance following exercise. These findings suggest that a short bout of aerobic exercise selectively counteracts the time‐related decrements in processing capacity as well as neuroelectric processing of attention and conflict suppression that contribute to behavioral outcomes of inhibitory control.

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In high demand contexts, uni-or multi-modal signals are used to convey redundant information and improve performance. This is especially the case with improving the detection of discrete peripheral signals. However, how one processes peripheral signals may change depending on the greater environmental context. The underlying cognitive processing of signals is important to determine how they may influence the degree to which each signal enhances, as opposed to slows down, detection. Until now, it was unclear if i) the introduction of, or increased difficulty of, a second task changes how people combine peripheral signals (that is, in a parallel, serial, or coactive fashion) and ii) if processing efficiency depends on the salience of the peripheral signals or the presence/difficulty of a centrally located and continuous tracking task. This manuscript describes an application of Systems Factorial Technology to investigate the cognitive processing mechanisms of redundant signals in the context of a multiple object tracking (MOT) task. The MOT task load (track 0, 1, or 4 dots) and the salience of peripheral signals (bright, dim) were manipulated. The data indicate peoples' processing of peripheral signals changed depending on the MOT task load. Under a high MOT task load, most people processed redundant signals in a parallel fashion. Alternatively, nearly half of people processed the signals in a serial fashion when asked to simultaneously track 0 or 1 dot. Implications for the use and design of redundant signals in multi-task contexts that vary in task demands are discussed.

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