Effect of a running intervention on explicit, implicit and neural components of association with running in female novice runners

Recreational running is an attractive leisure activity associated with many positive effects on mental and physical health (Junior et al., 2015). However, continuation of running behaviour appears to be a problem for many individuals, and to a greater extent for women (Fokkema et al., 2019). Both explicit and implicit processes are considered to be associated with physical activity behaviour (e.g. Brand & Ekkekakis, 2018). We aimed to explore how associations with running change through an eight-weeks running intervention (30 min running sessions 3x/week). 24 women (M = 23.9 years, SD = 3.4) with no or little experience in recreational running participated. Three explicit measures towards running (cognitive attitude, affective attitude, feeling thermometer) and a running-related Single-Target Implicit Association Test (ST-IAT) with concurrent EEG recording were collected before and after the intervention. Implicit associations towards running were quantified by D-Scores and mean target-related (i.e. runner stimuli) reaction time (RT) differences between the positive and negative pairing task condition. Equivalently, mean amplitude differences in the Late Positive Potential (LPP) time range (400-600 ms) at electrode Pz were calculated from EEG data. Paired t-tests revealed statistically significant increases for the explicit attitude components (p < .05) and the feeling thermometer (p < .01). Changes in implicit and neural components showed no statistical significance (p > .05), but large individual differences. The implicit-explicit discrepancy might indicate that adoption and continuation of regular running behavior in female novice runners after an eight-weeks running intervention depend more on explicit than implicit associations towards running.