ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Sport Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1517827
This article is part of the Research TopicExercising body & brain: the effects of physical exercise on brain healthView all 8 articles
An 8-Week 24-Form Tai Chi Intervention on Cognition in Chinese College Students Overusing Short Videos: A Randomized Controlled Trial
Provisionally accepted
- 1College of Outdoor Sports, Guilin Tourism University, Guilin, Guangxi Zhuang Region, China
- 2Liming Vocational University, Quanzhou, China
- 3School of Physical Education and Health, Guilin Institute of Information Technology, Guilin, Guangxi Zhuang Region, China
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This study evaluated the effect of an 8-week practice of twenty-four forms of Tai Chi on cognition in college students aged 18-21 years who were overexposed to short videos.Methods: A total of 1803 short video usage questionnaires were distributed at a college in Fujian Province, China, and 1790 valid questionnaires were collected. Sixty college students who scored in the top 20% on the questionnaire were randomly assigned to a Tai Chi experimental group (TCG) or an overuse control group (OCG), with 30 participants in each. The 32 students with the lowest 20% questionnaire scores were selected as the low-frequency-use control group (LCG). The TCG participated in 24-form Tai Chi training three times a week for 8 weeks. The OCG and LCG maintained their original habits without intervention. All groups were tested before, at the end of, and two months after training, using the digit string memory test, word delineation test, and three E-prime tests, which test memory, sustained attention, selective attention, and comprehensive attention.Result: There were no significant differences in the digital string memory test, the number cancellation test, and oddball paradigm results. In the Go/No-go experiment, accuracy showed no significant difference across groups before and after the intervention. Reaction times for TCG and OCG were significantly higher than LCG pre-intervention (p<0.05). Post-intervention, TCG reaction times significantly decreased (p<0.05), aligning with LCG and differing significantly from OCG.Two months post-experiment, reaction times were similar across all groups. In the Stroop test, no significant accuracy differences were found before and after the intervention. Pre-intervention, TCG and OCG reaction times were significantly longer than LCG (p<0.05). Post-intervention, reaction times decreased for TCG and OCG, with TCG's decline being more significant, aligning with LCG Tai Chi Intervention on Cognition 2 (p<0.05). Two months post-experiment, reaction times became similar across all groups with no significant differences. Discussion: Overuse of short videos correlates with declines in sustained and comprehensive attention in college students. Tai Chi positively impacted sustained and comprehensive attention in students overusing short videos but had no significant effect on memory and selective attention.When Tai Chi training is discontinued, its positive effects gradually dissipate.
Keywords: Tai Chi, Cognition, College student, Short video, sustained attention
Received: 30 Nov 2024; Accepted: 15 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, Rongxin and Chongyao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Cai Rongxin, Liming Vocational University, Quanzhou, China
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