Chronic participation in externally paced, but not self‐paced sports is associated with the modulation of domain‐general cognition

Abstract

The present study investigated the role of chronic sport participation in the modulation of vigilance and inhibitory control. We also aimed to disentangle the relative contribution of different types of sport expertise and sport-related fitness to the exercisecognition relationship. Three groups of young adults differing in their chronic sport expertise (externally-paced sports, n = 22, self-paced sports, n = 22, non-athletes, n = 22) took part in the study. Participants completed a cardiovascular fitness test, a hand-eye coordination test and two different types of vigilance tasks: (1) Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT) and (2) Oddball Task, which were designed to gain insight into the cognitive processes involved in sustaining attention over time and allocating selective attention by exerting inhibitory control, respectively. No differences were found in PVT performance between the two athlete groups and between self-paced sports athletes and non-athletes, whereas athletes from externally-paced sports outperformed non-athletes. Crucially, athletes from externally-paced sports also differed from those of self-paced sports and non-athletes in the Oddball task, showing less omission and commission errors. The sport expertise effect was independent of participant's cardiovascular fitness while hand-eye coordination modulated vigilance and inhibitory control performance. Our findings add novel empirical evidence to the role of expertise in cognitively demanding sports as an important factor in the relationship between exercise and cognition.

The relationship between vigilance capacity and physical exercise: a mixed-effects multistudy analysis

“…Across studies, VO 2 consumption (ml · kg −1 · min −1 ) during exercise was employed as the main index of cardiovascular fitness and was estimated and reported using three different methods: A = estimation of the VO 2max (ml · kg −1 · min −1 ) from the maximum power output measured in watts in a maximal incremental cycle-ergometer test (American College of Sports Medicine, 2013) (Studies 1 and 7; see Luque-Casado et al (2013) and Ballester et al (2019) for details); B = estimation of the VO 2max (ml · kg −1 · min −1 ) from the Léger Multi-stage fitness test (Léger et al, 1988) (Studies 2 and 6; see Ballester et al (2015, 2017) for details); C = direct measure of oxygen uptake (ml · kg −1 · min −1 ) at the ventilatory anaerobic threshold (VAT; VO 2 at VAT ) in a submaximal incremental cycle-ergometer test (Studies 3–5; see Ciria et al (2017) and Luque-Casado et al (2016b) for details).…”

Which Type of Exercise Is More Beneficial for Cognitive Function? A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Open-Skill Exercise versus Closed-Skill Exercise among Children, Adults, and Elderly Populations

“…jointly analyzed the selected articles. After excluding articles that did not meet our screening criteria, a total of 19 studies, including 15 cross-sectional studies [4,20,25,[40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51] and 4 intervention studies [21,23,24,52] were selected for the analysis. The cross-sectional studies and intervention studies were analyzed separately.…”

Relative Age Effect in the Sport Environment. Role of Physical Fitness and Cognitive Function in Youth Soccer Players

“…This rationale is in line with the “cognitive skill transfer” and the “broad transfer” hypotheses [29,30], which state that learning and practicing certain activities may lead to adaptations in basic cognitive abilities, which are potentially transferable to various skills in other domains. In this vein, recent findings have shown that externally-paced athletes (e.g., soccer players) showed better cognitive performance (i.e., vigilance and inhibitory control) than both non-athletes and self-paced athletes, without cardiovascular fitness modulation of these differential effects [31].…”