Physiological differences in athletes and non-athletes

Research has shown that there are differences in physiological functions between athletes and people who lead a more sedentary lifestyle. There are differences in resting heart rate along with heart rate during exercise. A highly trained athlete's resting heart rate can be as low at 50BPM while the resting heart rate of a non-athlete can be 70BPM (Burton, Stokes, & Hall, 2004). Additionally, one difference that has been identified by past literature is the differences in stroke volume and heart rate during exercise. (Burton, Stokes, & Hall, 2004). When comparing the cardiac function of athletes and non-athletes both at rest and during maximum exercise; athletes tend to have a higher stroke volume but a lower heart rate both at rest and during maximum exercise (Burton, Stokes, & Hall 2004). 

The Cognitive Effects of Exercise

Throughout past research, studies have found that people who exercise self-report that physical activity affects their mental abilities, but the direction of the reported effect is not consistent throughout the literature (Tomporowski & Ellis, 1986). While people report that exercise effects their cognitive abilities, there is also experimental evidence. For example, Hillman, Erickson, and Kramer (2008) conduct a study of existing research on the influence exercise on brain functioning. From their research, Hillman, Erickson, and Kramer (2008) found that in human and non-human studies, exercise and aerobic fitness can have positive effects on various aspects of cognitive functioning, however, most of the research is done in populations of older adults. For our study, we would like to study college aged populations, specifically non-athlete and athlete college aged populations. Jacobson and Matthaeus (2014) strived to discover how cognitive performance differs in athletes versus non-athletes. To measure cognitive performance, the researchers test for the executive functioning of everyone in their study by having participants complete the Delis- Kaplan Executive Function System (D-KEPS) Tower Test and the Color-Word interference test (Jacobson & Matthaeus 2014). Jacobson and Matthaeus (2014) found athletes performed better on some of the executive functioning testing compared to the non-athlete group. This study focused on long term exercise in athletes and the effects on cognitive functioning. In our study, however, we would like to look at the more short-term effects of cognitive functioning directly after exercise.
We predict that moderate exercise will have have effects on the cognitive functioning of non-athletes, but little or no effect on athletes. Further, we predict that...
We will need a paragraph at the end of intro talking about our specific hypotheses In our research, we plan to examine if exercise has cognitive effects.