To explore the short-term improvement effect of physical exercise and cognitive training on inhibitory control function of college students, and to clarify the temporal quantitative-effectiveness relationships between long-term exercise-integrated cognitive interventions and inhibitory control function of college students, in order to provide a reference for promoting inhibitory control function in this population.

College students from Tianjin University of Sport were recruited in May 2022 to participate in the intervention study, which included both short-term and long-term interventions. The short-term intervention used a 2 (physical exercise: yes, no) × 2 (cognitive training: yes, no) between-groups design, with 69 participants randomized into a movement integration cognitive group (n=18), a physical exercise group (n=16), a cognitive training group (n=17), and a control group (sedentary viewing of a health information video, n=18), for a 30-min intervention.The long-term intervention used a mixed experimental design with a 2 (intervention groups; intervention group, control group, between-group variable) ×5 (intervention time: pre-test, 1 week, 4 weeks, 6 weeks, and 8 weeks, within-group variable) mixed experimental design with 24 participants, including 13 in the intervention group, who underwent the exercise-integrated cognitive intervention for 30 min, 3 times per week, and 11 in the control group, who maintained their daily activities without the intervention. The main effects of the independent variables and their interactions were analyzed using covariance and repeated measures ANOVA.

There was a statistically significant interaction between physical exercise and cognitive training on accuracy of the Flanker task for the short intervention[F_{(1, 64)}=7.05, P=0.01, η_P²=0.10], and the simple effect test showed that cognitive training reduced accuracy of responses in the presence of physical exercise condition(P=0.02), and the main effect of physical exercise among college students was significant for the reaction time [F_{(1, 65)}=14.12, P < 0.01, η²_p=0.18]; for Flanker task reaction time in the long-term intervention, the main effect of intervention time was significant[F_{(4, 19)}=3.03, P=0.04, η_P²=0.39].However, the intervention results of 1, 4, 6 and 8 weeks in the intervention group [(28.13±10.32)(14.14±26.98)(13.54±25.61)(15.14±21.34)ms] were all better than the pre-test [(77.54±39.34)ms], the main effect of intervention group was significant [F_{(1, 22)}=6.96, P=0.02, η=0.24].

In a short-term intervention for inhibitory control function in college students, physical exercise is more effective than cognitive training; long-term exercise and cognitive training can improve the inhibitory control function of college students.