Aug 19, 2024 05:49 PM
https://theconversation.com/elite-athlet...why-234665
EXCERPTS: Data from 5,339 participants (including 2267 athletes) was meta-analysed. The results showed significantly higher scores in attention and decision-making among professional athletes compared to normal people.
So athletes generally outperform us in cognitive tasks – but why?
It was the emergence of cognitive neuroscience that allowed scientists to map neural networks involved in sport imagery (such as athletes’ abilities to reproduce sport-related situations in their minds) and athletes’ decision-making regarding in-game situations.
[...] Decision-making is a human skill. The more you practice, the better you get. But good decision-makers such as elite athletes rely on other cognitive skills to simulate in their minds the potential outcomes of any given situation.
Here is an example – imagine a rugby league match.
A halfback is starting a play with his team close to the try line. He has several teammates to pass the ball to but he decides to tuck the ball under his arm and sprint to score a try – he had seen open space in the opponent’s defensive line.
In a fraction of a second, he had to make a decision based on the information he had available. Using imagery, he had to consider every other player’s position in the field, calculating the best route for each possible pass or run he could make.
It requires high levels of attention to visually scan the field, stop any distraction from clouding thoughts, memory to hold and retrieve information while processing all alternatives, and creativity to imagine the same play from different angles.
These three skills – attention, memory and creativity – have technical names: inhibitory control, working memory and cognitive flexibility, respectively.
They are the three core executive functions used by the brain to execute complex tasks.
The most groundbreaking study about the role of executive functions in sport performance came out in 2012.... (MORE - missing details)
https://youtu.be/yG7v4y_xwzQ
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/yG7v4y_xwzQ
EXCERPTS: Data from 5,339 participants (including 2267 athletes) was meta-analysed. The results showed significantly higher scores in attention and decision-making among professional athletes compared to normal people.
So athletes generally outperform us in cognitive tasks – but why?
It was the emergence of cognitive neuroscience that allowed scientists to map neural networks involved in sport imagery (such as athletes’ abilities to reproduce sport-related situations in their minds) and athletes’ decision-making regarding in-game situations.
[...] Decision-making is a human skill. The more you practice, the better you get. But good decision-makers such as elite athletes rely on other cognitive skills to simulate in their minds the potential outcomes of any given situation.
Here is an example – imagine a rugby league match.
A halfback is starting a play with his team close to the try line. He has several teammates to pass the ball to but he decides to tuck the ball under his arm and sprint to score a try – he had seen open space in the opponent’s defensive line.
In a fraction of a second, he had to make a decision based on the information he had available. Using imagery, he had to consider every other player’s position in the field, calculating the best route for each possible pass or run he could make.
It requires high levels of attention to visually scan the field, stop any distraction from clouding thoughts, memory to hold and retrieve information while processing all alternatives, and creativity to imagine the same play from different angles.
These three skills – attention, memory and creativity – have technical names: inhibitory control, working memory and cognitive flexibility, respectively.
They are the three core executive functions used by the brain to execute complex tasks.
The most groundbreaking study about the role of executive functions in sport performance came out in 2012.... (MORE - missing details)
https://youtu.be/yG7v4y_xwzQ