Bashore Theodore R, Ally Brandon, van Wouwe Nelleke C, Neimat Joseph S, van den Wildenberg Wery P M, Wylie Scott A
Department of Neurosurgery, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, United States.
Department of Psychology, University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, CO, United States.
Front Psychol. 2018 Aug 22;9:1496. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01496. eCollection 2018.
American football is played in a dynamic environment that places considerable demands on a player's ability to make fast, precise reactions while controlling premature, impulsive reactions to spatial misinformation. We investigated the hypothesis that collegiate football players are more proficient than their non-athlete counterparts at controlling impulsive motor actions. National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I football players ( = 280) and non-athlete controls ( = 32) completed a variant of the Simon conflict task, which quantifies choice reaction speed and the proficiency of controlling spatially driven response impulses. Overall, the choice reaction times (RTs) and accuracy rates of football players and controls were equivalent. Similarly, football players and controls were equally susceptible to producing incorrect impulsive motor responses. However, the slowing of RT attributed to the activation and successful inhibition of these impulses (i.e., the ) was reduced significantly among football players compared to controls. Moreover, differences in varied by position among the players, with the reduction being greater for offensive than for defensive players. Among offensive players, running backs, wide receivers, and offensive linemen had greater than did controls, whereas among defensive players only linebackers had greater control. Notably, the was reduced by 60% in running backs compared to controls. These results contribute to emerging evidence that elite football players possess more proficient executive control over their motor systems than their age counterparts and suggest that the speed of controlling impulsive motor reactions may represent an enhanced cognitive "intangible" among football players.
美式橄榄球比赛的环境充满活力，对运动员在控制因空间错误信息而产生的过早、冲动反应的同时做出快速、精确反应的能力提出了相当高的要求。我们研究了这样一个假设：大学橄榄球运动员在控制冲动性运动动作方面比非运动员同龄人更熟练。美国国家大学生体育协会（NCAA）一级橄榄球运动员（n = 280）和非运动员对照组（n = 32）完成了西蒙冲突任务的一个变体，该任务量化了选择反应速度和控制空间驱动反应冲动的熟练程度。总体而言，橄榄球运动员和对照组的选择反应时间（RTs）和准确率相当。同样，橄榄球运动员和对照组在产生错误的冲动性运动反应方面同样容易受到影响。然而，与对照组相比，橄榄球运动员中由于这些冲动的激活和成功抑制（即停止信号反应时间）导致的RT减慢显著降低。此外，运动员中停止信号反应时间的差异因位置而异，进攻球员的减少幅度大于防守球员。在进攻球员中，跑卫、外接手和进攻线卫的停止信号反应时间比对照组更大，而在防守球员中，只有线卫有更好的控制能力。值得注意的是，与对照组相比，跑卫的停止信号反应时间减少了60%。这些结果为新出现的证据做出了贡献，即精英橄榄球运动员对其运动系统的执行控制比同龄人更熟练，并表明控制冲动性运动反应的速度可能代表了橄榄球运动员中一种增强的认知“无形资产”。
