Soccer athletes are superior to non-athletes at perceiving soccer-specific and non-sport specific human biological motion

Abstract

Recent studies have shown that athletes’ domain specific perceptual-cognitive expertise can transfer to everyday tasks. Here we assessed the perceptual-cognitive expertise of athletes and non-athletes using sport specific and non-sport specific biological motion perception (BMP) tasks. Using a virtual environment, university-level soccer players and university students’ non-athletes were asked to perceive the direction of a point-light walker and to predict the trajectory of a masked-ball during a point-light soccer kick. Angles of presentation were varied for orientation (upright, inverted) and distance (2 m, 4 m, 16 m). Accuracy and reaction time were measured to assess observers’ performance. The results highlighted athletes’ superior ability compared to non-athletes to accurately predict the trajectory of a masked soccer ball presented at 2 m (reaction time), 4 m (accuracy and reaction time), and 16 m (accuracy) of distance. More interestingly, experts also displayed greater performance compared to non-athletes throughout the more fundamental and general point-light walker direction task presented at 2 m (reaction time), 4 m (accuracy and reaction time), and 16 m (reaction time) of distance. In addition, athletes showed a better performance throughout inverted conditions in the walker (reaction time) and soccer kick (accuracy and reaction time) tasks. This implies that during human BMP, athletes demonstrate an advantage for recognizing body kinematics that goes beyond sport specific actions.

Age-related differences in the motor planning of a lower leg target matching task

“…For example, highly skilled athletes with extensive motor experience, such as elite soccer players, display higher levels of accuracy than non-athletes when faced with changes in task demands such as end point trajectory placement or a moving soccer ball to kick (Egan, Verheul, & Savelsbergh, 2007; Ford, Hodges, Huys, & Williams, 2009). These athletes also display faster reactions times suggesting that they are able to integrate the appropriate sensory cues for a movement and predict the consequences of their results than non-athletes potentially due to extensive experience performing and adapting highly specific action patterns (Montes-Mico, Bueno, Candel, & Pons, 2000; Romeas & Faubert, 2015; Vanttinen, Blomqvist, Luhtanen, & Hakkinen, 2010). Therefore, the amount of preparation before a goal-directed movement is highly dependent upon an individual not only being provided with adequate information concerning limb dynamics and goal of the motor task, but also on the robustness and adaptability of the internal model underlying the motor skill.…”

The key to success in elite athletes? Explicit and implicit motor learning in youth elite and non-elite soccer players

“…Specifically, studies on the youngest soccer players that are selected for a professional youth academy or talent development programme are required, because only in this way, conclusions could be drawn about the possibility of enhanced cognitive functions and/or brain structure and functioning as a result of soccer training and experience. Either way, assessing white matter and cognitive functions in youth talented soccer players, might have a large impact on talent identification and development, since a growing body of research showed the importance of excellent cognitive functioning for performance and success on the field at the elite sports level (e.g., Cona Cavazzana, Paoli, Marcolin, Grainer, & Bisiacchi, 2015;Romeas & Faubert, 2015;Vestberg et al, 2012).…”

Combining 3D-MOT with motor and perceptual decision-making tasks: conception of a life-sized virtual perceptual-cognitive training paradigm

“…The paradigm allows to determine what the observer perceives solely on kinematics, while other motion cues are eliminated (Sparrow and Sherman 2001). This task has been used to highlight athlete expertise in sport science, has shown potential for the study of spatial characteristics of perception related to sport action (Abernethy and Parker 1989, Ward, Williams et al 2002, Wright, Bishop et al 2011) and has allowed researchers to assess perception of sports action within a life-sized virtual environment using stereoscopic displays (Bideau, Kulpa et al 2010, Romeas andFaubert 2015). In the present study, a virtual biological motion pattern was employed to assess users' decision-making ability based on specific kinematics while also spreading their attention on the dynamic scene to visually track moving targets (3D-MOT task).…”

“…The same 3D-MOT task was used as in Experiment 1 (Figure 1). The BMP task (Figure 6), consisted of the discrimination of the walking direction (right or left) of a point-light walker (Romeas and Faubert 2015). The point-light walker (Legault, Allard et al 2013, Romeas andFaubert 2015) was a dynamic representation of human forms and was made up of 15 black dots, which represented the head, upper and lower trunk, shoulders, hips, elbows, wrists, knees, and ankles on a white background.…”