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. 2013 Mar 7:4:36.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00036. eCollection 2013.

Perceptual-cognitive expertise in elite volleyball players

Heloisa Alves  1 , Michelle W Voss, Walter R Boot, Andrea Deslandes, Victor Cossich, Jose Inacio Salles, Arthur F Kramer
Affiliations

Perceptual-cognitive expertise in elite volleyball players

Heloisa Alves et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

The goal of the current study was to investigate the relationship between sport expertise and perceptual and cognitive skills, as measured by the component skills approach. We hypothesized that athletes would outperform non-athlete controls in a number of perceptual and cognitive domains and that sport expertise would minimize gender differences. A total of 154 individuals (87 professional volleyball players and 67 non-athlete controls) participated in the study. Participants performed a cognitive battery, which included tests of executive control, memory, and visuo-spatial attention. Athletes showed superior performance speed on three tasks (two executive control tasks and one visuo-spatial attentional processing task). In a subset of tasks, gender effects were observed mainly in the control group, supporting the notion that athletic experience can reduce traditional gender effects. The expertise effects obtained substantiate the view that laboratory tests of cognition may indeed enlighten the sport-cognition relationship.

Keywords: cognition; expertise; sport.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Mean reaction time (ms) for the two groups as a function of trial type. Error bars represent ±1 standard error.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Mean reaction time (ms) for the two groups on the Go and Stop conditions. Error bars represent ±1 standard error.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Stop reaction time (ms) for the two groups as a function of age. Error bars represent ±1 standard error.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Stop probability for the two groups as a function of age. Error bars represent ±1 standard error.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Mean reaction time (ms) for the two groups as a function of gender. Error bars represent ±1 standard error.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Mean reaction time (s) for the two groups as a function of gender. Error bars represent ±1 standard error.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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