"+" indicates an improvement of the perceptual-cognitive performance under physical exercise, "0" no change and "-" a deterioration.
For accuracy in working memory tasks, five studies showed improvements under physical exercise [20, 23, 45 47], five found no changes [19, 25, 35, 39, 44], and three found deteriorations [26, 27, 45].
Concerning the 11 studies that examined accuracy (i.e., error rates) in general perceptual-cognitive tasks, only Huttermann and Memmert [34], who did not induce any time pressure while performing an accuracy-based task, revealed improvements under physical exercise.
Eight of the 11 studies showed that physical load did not influence athletes' accuracy in general tasks, which reflects prior research in general experimental setups where participants' reaction times improved while accuracy failed to change under physical exercise (e.g., [4]).
For accuracy in attention/perception tasks, two studies found improvements [34, 41] and six studies found no changes of perceptual-cognitive performances under physical exercise [19, 20, 28, 36 38].
The results for speed show that seven studies find improvements under physical exercise in working memory tasks [19, 20, 29, 32, 35, 39, 44] and 11 studies in attention/perception tasks [20, 28, 30, 31, 33, 36 38, 40 42].
The three studies considering reaction times found an improvement under acute physical exercise.
While working memory tasks improve under moderate physical exercise, research indicates deterioration in these tasks during heavy exercise [10].
Fourteen of these studies revealed improvements for reaction times under acute physical exercise, while the study from Delignières et al. [40] and from Llorens et al. [33] only showed this for athlete groups.
However, looking at the specificity of the perceptual-cognitive task, results of this systematic review suggest that athletes' reaction times improved for both general and specific tasks under acute physical exercise.
Fourteen studies examined athletes and compared the impact of the physical exercise under different conditions, such as rest-physical exercise or different intensities of physical exercise [20, 23, 25 29, 32, 35, 37 39, 46, 47].
