Aly Mohamed, Alzahrani Turki, Fakehy Mohammed, Abass Mohamed, Mohamed Sheref
Department of Educational Sciences and Sports Psychology, Faculty of Physical Education, Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt.
Department of Sport Sciences, College of Education, Taif University, Taif, Saudi Arabia.
Front Psychol. 2024 Dec 20;15:1460684. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1460684. eCollection 2024.
Attentional engagement, the ability to maintain focus on relevant tasks, plays a crucial role in optimizing human performance. Studies have shown that athletes exhibit superior attentional engagement compared to non-athletes; however, it remains unclear if these benefits persist in non-sport-related tasks or differ across types of sports expertise, such as open-skill versus closed-skill sports.
Ninety-three young adults, divided into open-skill athletes ( = 31), closed-skill athletes ( = 31), and a control group ( = 31), completed an auditory oddball task while the P3 component of event-related potentials was measured to assess attentional processing. Aerobic fitness was assessed using the YMCA fitness test, and linear regression models, adjusted for confounders, examined the relationship between aerobic fitness and attentional processing.
Findings revealed that both open- and closed-skill athletes exhibited significantly larger P3 amplitudes than non-athletes, indicating enhanced attentional engagement. However, no significant differences in response time or response accuracy were observed between the groups. Hierarchical regression analysis further demonstrated a positive correlation between aerobic fitness and P3 amplitude, underscoring the role of aerobic fitness in cognitive processing.
These findings suggest that participation in either open- or closed-skill sports can enhance attentional engagement beyond the sports context in healthy young adults, with aerobic fitness playing a key role in supporting cognitive performance. Additionally, this study extends previous findings from Western and Asian literature by providing evidence from an Egyptian sample, thereby supporting the generalizability of the cognitive benefits of aerobic fitness and sports participation across different cultural contexts.
注意力参与，即专注于相关任务的能力，在优化人类表现方面起着至关重要的作用。研究表明，与非运动员相比，运动员表现出更强的注意力参与；然而，这些益处是否在非体育相关任务中持续存在，或者在不同类型的运动专长（如开放技能运动与封闭技能运动）之间是否存在差异，仍不清楚。
93名年轻人被分为开放技能运动员组（n = 31）、封闭技能运动员组（n = 31）和对照组（n = 31），他们在完成一项听觉Oddball任务的同时，测量事件相关电位的P3成分以评估注意力处理。使用YMCA体能测试评估有氧适能，并通过调整混杂因素的线性回归模型来研究有氧适能与注意力处理之间的关系。
研究结果显示，开放技能和封闭技能运动员的P3波幅均显著大于非运动员，表明注意力参与增强。然而，各组之间在反应时间或反应准确性方面未观察到显著差异。分层回归分析进一步表明有氧适能与P3波幅之间存在正相关，强调了有氧适能在认知处理中的作用。
这些发现表明，参与开放技能或封闭技能运动可以增强健康年轻人在运动情境之外的注意力参与，有氧适能在支持认知表现方面起着关键作用。此外，本研究通过提供来自埃及样本的证据扩展了西方和亚洲文献的先前研究结果，从而支持了有氧适能和运动参与的认知益处跨不同文化背景的普遍性。
