It's a Matter of Mind! Cognitive Functioning Predicts the Athletic Performance in Ultra-Marathon Runners

Abstract

The present study was aimed at exploring the influence of cognitive processes on performance in ultra-marathon runners, providing an overview of the cognitive aspects that characterize outstanding runners. Thirty runners were administered a battery of computerized tests right before their participation in an ultra-marathon. Then, they were split according to the race rank into two groups (i.e., faster runners and slower runners) and their cognitive performance was compared. Faster runners outperformed slower runners in trials requiring motor inhibition and were more effective at performing two tasks together, successfully suppressing the activation of the information for one of the tasks when was not relevant. Furthermore, slower runners took longer to remember to execute pre-defined actions associated with emotional stimuli when such stimuli were presented. These findings suggest that cognitive factors play a key role in running an ultra-marathon. Indeed, if compared with slower runners, faster runners seem to have a better inhibitory control, showing superior ability not only to inhibit motor response but also to suppress processing of irrelevant information. Their cognitive performance also appears to be less influenced by emotional stimuli. This research opens new directions towards understanding which kinds of cognitive and emotional factors can discriminate talented runners from less outstanding runners.

Fig 1. Schematic illustration of the Dual-Task paradigm.

The figure illustrates the pleasant PM session, in which five pleasant PM cues needed to be encoded for later execution of the intention. The same tasks and procedure were run for both unpleasant and neutral sessions. Although not displayed, a blank screen with a fixation cross (lasting 1200, 1400, or 1600 ms) always occurred between two distinct stimuli. For the ongoing task, participants had to press one of two keys with the right hand to decide whether the picture was same or different from the picture presented two trials before. For the PM task, participants were required to remember to press an additional key, with their left index finger, when they saw a picture presented during the encoding phase. Note: The pictures displayed in the figure are not those used in the study, but are taken from Internet only for illustration purposes.

Fig 2. Mean Accuracy in the Inhibitory Control Task (ICT) trials for the faster and slower runners.

Faster runners outperform slower runners selectively in the nogo trials, whereas they did not differ from slower runners in the detect and go trials. Vertical bars represent standard error.

Fig 3. Mean reaction times (RTs) in the ongoing 2-back task, separately for each type of PM cue valence and ongoing stimulus valence.

Runners group differences were observed in the ‘same’ trials, especially when participants had to monitor for unpleasant and pleasant PM cues and when the valence of the PM cue matched the valence of the ongoing stimuli.