Extensive studies have shown that a sports expert is superior to a sports novice in visually perceptual-cognitive processes of sports scene information, however the attentional and neural basis of it has not been thoroughly explored. The present study examined whether a sport expert has the attentional superiority on scene information relevant to his/her sport skill, and explored what factor drives this superiority. To address this problem, EEGs were recorded as participants passively viewed sport scenes (tennis vs. non-tennis) and negative emotional faces in the context of a visual attention task, where the pictures of sport scenes or of negative emotional faces randomly followed the pictures with overlapping sport scenes and negative emotional faces. ERP results showed that for experts, the evoked potential of attentional competition elicited by the overlap of tennis scene was significantly larger than that evoked by the overlap of non-tennis scene, while this effect was absent for novices. The LORETA showed that the experts' left medial frontal gyrus (MFG) cortex was significantly more active as compared to the right MFG when processing the overlap of tennis scene, but the lateralization effect was not significant in novices. Those results indicate that experts have attentional superiority on skill-related scene information, despite intruding the scene through negative emotional faces that are prone to cause negativity bias toward their visual field as a strong distractor. This superiority is actuated by the activation of left MFG cortex and probably due to self-reference.

The present study explored the intrinsic event-related potential (ERP) features of the effects of acute psychological stress on the processing of motion-in-depth perception using a dual-task paradigm. After a mental arithmetic task was used to induce acute psychological stress, a collision task was used to evaluate motion-in-depth perception. The error value and average amplitude of late slow waves (SW) were significantly larger for the earlier colliding spheres’ than for the later colliding spheres. The P1 peak latency in the left occipital region was significantly shorter than that of the right occipital region in the motion-in-depth perception task. Compared to the control condition, the estimated value of residual time-to-collision and error value were significantly reduced, and the N1 peak amplitude and the SW averaged amplitude were significantly increased in the stress condition. Longer motion-in-depth time improved discrimination accuracy and decreased the investment of cognitive resources. Acute psychological stress increased behavioral performance and enhanced attention resources on the motion-in-depth perception task together with greater investment of cognitive resources.

The coordination between habitual and goal-directed behaviors has significant evolutionary importance. However, the specific cognitive processes and neural mechanisms underlying this coordination process require further research. Since inducing natural habitual responses through repetitive stimuli-response training in a laboratory environment is extremely difficult in humans, well-trained sports experts with automatic perception-action features towards expertise-related stimuli serve as ideal natural samples to address this critical gap. We conducted scalp EEG recordings while sports experts performed an expertise Simon task that involved both automatic and goal-directed processes with moderate space of expertise-related stimuli congruent or incongruent with the response hand. In the congruent condition, sports experts showed larger response-locked LRP and beta band (15-25Hz) activity at the frontal-central region, indicating an enhanced automatic response tendency towards expertise-related stimuli. In the incongruent condition, a larger theta (3-8Hz) dynamic was observed in the superior frontal gyrus when sports experts needed to inhibit the automatic response tendency. The results indicated that sports experts exhibited an enhanced coordination process towards expertise-related stimuli, which was closely related to specific cognitive processes of response preparation and response inhibition in coordinating habitual and goal-directed behaviors.

The purpose of the present study was to examine the association between Chinese preschool children’s home numeracy experiences and their mathematical abilities. The parents of 515 4- to 5-year-old preschool children reported their frequency of participation in home numeracy activities, and the children were assessed on their math ability. The results revealed that the parents engaged in both formal and informal math activities at home. Family socioeconomic status showed significant positive correlations with number game and number application activities. Parental involvement in number skills activities positively predicted young children’s formal and informal math ability, while number application activities positively predicted young children’s informal math ability. These results suggest that parents should pay attention to both formal and informal activities in support of their children’s math learning at home.

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