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Tai Chi practice has some fitness, wellness, and general cognitive effects in older adults. However, benefits of Tai Chi on specific mental-attentional executive processes have not been investigated previously. We studied older Canadian adults of Chinese and non-Chinese origin and from low socioeconomic areas. | Kim et al. BMC Psychology 2016 4 29 DOI 10.1186 S40359-016-0137-0 BMC Psychology RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access The mental-attention Tai Chi effect with older adults Theresa H. M. Kim 1 Juan Pascual-Leone2 Janice Johnson2 and Hala Tamim1 Abstract Background Tai Chi practice has some fitness wellness and general cognitive effects in older adults. However benefits of Tai Chi on specific mental-attentional executive processes have not been investigated previously. We studied older Canadian adults of Chinese and non-Chinese origin and from low socioeconomic areas. Methods Sixty-four adults 51-87 years old took part in a 16-week Tai Chi program. There were two groups Chinese-background n 35 and Non-Chinese-background n 29 . They received four mental-attention executive tasks before and after the 16-week period. These tasks measured visuospatial reasoning mental-attentional activation working memory attentional inhibition and balance between these attention factors field-dependence-independence . Results Chinese participants showed significant gain on Figural Intersections Task mental-attentional capacity Antisaccade attentional inhibition and Matrix Reasoning fluid intelligence measure . Both groups evidenced gain on the Water Level Task attentional balance . Conclusions These gains suggest that Tai Chi can improve mental-attentional vigilance and executive control when practitioners are sufficiently motivated to pursue this practice and apply themselves as our Chinese participants seem to have done . We found that Tai Chi enhanced mental attentional executives in the Chinese sample. The largely negative results with Non-Chinese participants might be explained by less strong motivation and by the relatively short Tai Chi practice period which contrasts with the prior familiarity with Tai Chi of the Chinese participants. Keywords Tai Chi Mental-attention Working memory Attentional inhibition Attentional balance Field-dependence-independence Background Practices that could
