Meng Fanying, Li Anmin, You Yihong, Xie Chun
Department of Sport Psychology, School of Kinesiology, Shanghai University of Sport, Shanghai, China.
PeerJ. 2019 Feb 5;7:e6387. doi: 10.7717/peerj.6387. eCollection 2019.
Executive control, the ability to regulate the execution of a goal-directed task, is an important element in an athlete's skill set. Although previous studies have shown that executive control in athletes is better than that in non-athletes, those studies were mainly confined to conscious executive control. Many recent studies have suggested that executive control can be triggered by the presentation of visual stimuli without participant's conscious awareness. However, few studies have examined unconscious executive control in sports. Thus, the present study investigated whether, similar to conscious executive control, unconscious executive control in table tennis athletes is superior to that in non-athletes.
In total, 42 age-matched undergraduate students were recruited for this study; 22 nonathletic students lacking practical athletic experience comprised one group, and 20 table tennis athletes with many years of training in this sport comprised a second group. Each participant first completed an unconscious response priming task, the unconscious processing of visual-spatial information, and then completed a conscious version of this same response priming task.
Table tennis athletes showed a significant response priming effect, whereas non-athletes did not, when participants were unable to consciously perceive the visual-spatial priming stimuli. In addition, the number of years the table tennis athletes had trained in this sport (a measure of their motor expertise) was positively correlated with the strength of the unconscious response priming effect. However, both table tennis athletes and non-athletes showed a response priming effect when the primes were unmasked and the participants were able to consciously perceive the visual-spatial priming stimuli.
Our results suggest that motor expertise modulates unconscious, rather than conscious, executive control and that motor expertise is positively correlated with unconscious executive control in table tennis athletes.
执行控制，即调节目标导向任务执行的能力，是运动员技能组合中的一个重要元素。尽管先前的研究表明运动员的执行控制能力优于非运动员，但这些研究主要局限于有意识的执行控制。最近的许多研究表明，执行控制可以由视觉刺激的呈现触发，而无需参与者的有意识察觉。然而，很少有研究考察体育运动中的无意识执行控制。因此，本研究调查了乒乓球运动员的无意识执行控制是否与有意识执行控制一样，优于非运动员。
本研究共招募了42名年龄匹配的本科生；一组由22名缺乏实际运动经验的非运动员学生组成，另一组由20名有多年乒乓球训练经验的乒乓球运动员组成。每位参与者首先完成一项无意识反应启动任务，即对视觉空间信息的无意识加工，然后完成该反应启动任务的有意识版本。
当参与者无法有意识地感知视觉空间启动刺激时，乒乓球运动员表现出显著的反应启动效应，而非运动员则没有。此外，乒乓球运动员的运动训练年限（衡量其运动专业水平的指标）与无意识反应启动效应的强度呈正相关。然而，当启动刺激被揭示且参与者能够有意识地感知视觉空间启动刺激时，乒乓球运动员和非运动员都表现出反应启动效应。
我们的结果表明，运动专业水平调节无意识而非有意识的执行控制，并且运动专业水平与乒乓球运动员的无意识执行控制呈正相关。
