Influence of sports expertise level on attention in multiple object tracking

PeerJ

article

Fanghui Qiu¹  Yanling Pi²  Ke Liu²  Xuepei Li¹  Jian Zhang¹  Yin Wu³ 

[1] School of Kinesiology, Shanghai University of Sport;Shanghai Punan Hospital of Pudong New District;School of Economics and Management, Shanghai University of Sport

关键词: Visual attention;    Sports expertise;    Multiple object tracking;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.5732

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

Background This study aimed to investigate whether performance in a multiple object tracking (MOT) task could be improved incrementally with sports expertise, and whether differences between experienced and less experienced athletes, or non-athletes, were modulated by load. Methods We asked 22 elite and 20 intermediate basketball players, and 23 non-athletes, to perform an MOT task under three attentional load conditions (two, three, and four targets). Accuracies were analyzed to examine whether different levels of sports expertise influence MOT task performance. Results The elite athletes displayed better tracking performance compared with the intermediate or non-athletes when tracking three or four targets. However, no significant difference was found between the intermediate athletes and the non-athletes. Further, no differences were observed among the three groups when tracking two targets. Discussion The results suggest that the effects of expertise in team ball sports could transfer to a non-sports-specific attention task. These transfer effects to general cognitive functions occur only in elite athletes with extensive training under higher attentional load.

【 授权许可】

CC BY