Exposing an "Intangible" Cognitive Skill among Collegiate Football Players: Enhanced Interference Control

Frontiers in Psychology
Scott A WylieBrandon A Ally

Abstract

American football is played in a chaotic visual environment filled with relevant and distracting information. We investigated the hypothesis that collegiate football players show exceptional skill at shielding their response execution from the interfering effects of distraction (interference control). The performances of 280 football players from National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I football programs were compared to age-matched controls in a variant of the Eriksen flanker task (Eriksen and Eriksen, 1974). This task quantifies the magnitude of interference produced by visual distraction on split-second response execution. Overall, football athletes and age controls showed similar mean reaction times (RTs) and accuracy rates. However, football athletes were more proficient at shielding their response execution speed from the interfering effects of distraction (i.e., smaller flanker effect costs on RT). Offensive and defensive players showed smaller interference costs compared to controls, but defensive players showed the smallest costs. All defensive positions and one offensive position showed statistically smaller interference effects when compared directly to age controls. These data reveal a clear cognitive adv...Continue Reading

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Citations

Aug 24, 2018·PloS One·Nils SchumacherKlaus-Michael Braumann
Oct 26, 2020·Attention, Perception & Psychophysics·K Richard RidderinkhofMaurits W van der Molen
Oct 30, 2019·Frontiers in Sports and Active Living·Scott A WylieTheodore R Bashore
Sep 22, 2020·Cortex; a Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior·Zai-Fu YaoChun-Hao Wang
Oct 23, 2020·Biological Psychology·Chun-Hao WangWei-Kuang Liang

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