Temporal preparation in athletes: a comparison of tennis players and swimmers with sedentary controls.

The authors aimed to investigate the effects of different sporting experience on nonspecific temporal preparation. They evaluated temporal preparation in tennis players (an open-skill sport) and their athletic (swimmers, a closed skill-sport) and nonathletic (sedentary students) controls using a go/no-go variable foreperiod paradigm in which one simple condition and two go/no-go conditions (central-go and mixed-go) were included, which can be used to study the temporal aspects of nonspecific preparation with decision making in inhibition with different levels of cognitive load. Tennis players responded faster than nonathletic controls while there was no significant difference relative to the athletic controls. Additionally, the main finding of the present study is that the difference in reaction time between tennis players and nonathletic controls was found selectively for short foreperiods in which temporal uncertainty is higher and less temporal preparation can occur. Moreover, correlation analysis revealed that superior temporal preparation was positively associated with enhanced go/no-go decision making in the higher difficulty condition. Our findings are consistent with tennis players showing superior temporal processing. The absence of a significant effect in athletic controls suggests that there is a specific benefit from tennis training and indicates that temporal preparation may be susceptible to modulation by fitness and appropriate training.

Open vs. closed skill sports and the modulation of inhibitory control.

BACKGROUND: Inhibitory control, or the ability to suppress planned but inappropriate prepotent actions in the current environment, plays an important role in the control of human performance. Evidence from empirical studies utilizing a sport-specific design has shown that athletes have superior inhibitory control. However, less is known about whether this superiority might (1) still be seen in a general cognitive task without a sport-related context; (2) be modulated differentially by different sporting expertise (e.g., tennis versus swimming). METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here we compared inhibitory control across tennis players, swimmers and sedentary non-athletic controls using a stop-signal task without a sport-specific design. Our primary finding showed that tennis players had shorter stop-signal reaction times (SSRTs) when compared to swimmers and sedentary controls, whereas no difference was found between swimmers and sedentary controls. Importantly, this effect was further confirmed after considering potential confounding factors (e.g., BMI, training experience, estimated levels of physical activity and VO2max), indicative of better ability to inhibit unrequired responses in tennis players. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: This suggests that fundamental inhibitory control in athletes can benefit from open skill training. Sport with both physical and cognitive demands may provide a potential clinical intervention for those who have difficulties in inhibitory control.