During biological motion perception, individuals with perceptual
experience learn to use more global processing, simultaneously
extracting information from multiple body segments. Less-experienced
observers may use more local processing of individual body segments. In
this study, we examined how skill impacts the neural processing of
motion information. Skilled (N = 21) and less-skilled (N = 19) soccer
players anticipated temporally occluded videos of penalty kicks under
normal, blurred, or spatially occluded (hips-only) viewing conditions,
with the latter two conditions emphasizing global and local information
respectively. EEG was used to measure parietal alpha and beta
oscillations. Skilled players outperformed less-skilled players, albeit
both skill groups were less accurate under blurred and hips-only
conditions. Skilled performers showed significant decreases in bilateral
parietal beta power in the hips-only condition, suggesting a greater
reliance on global information. Additionally, the hips-only condition
evoked significantly greater beta relative to alpha power (beta –
alpha) and lower overall alpha power than the control condition for both
skill groups, suggesting this condition elicited a shift towards more
local processing. Our novel findings demonstrate that skill and
experience impact how motion is processed.
Global and local biological motion processing are likely influenced by an observer’s perceptual experience. Skilled athletes anticipating an opponent’s movements use globally distributed motion information, while less skilled athletes focus on single kinematic cues. Published reports have demonstrated that attention can be primed globally or locally before perceptual tasks; such an intervention could highlight motion processing mechanisms used by skilled and less skilled observers. In this study, we examined skill differences in biological motion processing using attentional priming. Skilled (N = 16) and less skilled (N = 16) players anticipated temporally occluded videos of volleyball attacks after being primed using a Navon matching task while parietal EEG was measured. Skilled players were more accurate than less skilled players across priming conditions. Global priming improved performance in both skill groups. Skilled players showed significantly reduced alpha and beta power in the right compared to left parietal region, but brain activity was not affected by the priming interventions. Our findings highlight the importance of right parietal dominance for skilled performers, which may be functional for inhibiting left hemispheric local processing or enhancing visual spatial attention for dynamic visual scenes. Further work is needed to systematically determine the function of this pattern of brain activity during skilled anticipation.
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