Enhanced Temporal but Not Attentional Processing in Expert Tennis Players

Abstract

In tennis, as in many disciplines of sport, fine spatio-temporal resolution is required to reach optimal performance. While many studies on tennis have focused on anticipatory skills or decision making, fewer have investigated the underlying visual perception abilities. In this study, we used a battery of seven visual tests that allowed us to assess which kind of visual information processing is performed better by tennis players than other athletes (triathletes) and non-athletes. We found that certain time-related skills, such as speed discrimination, are superior in tennis players compared to non-athletes and triathletes. Such tasks might be used to improve tennis performance in the future.

Modulation of brain oscillations during fundamental visuo-spatial processing: A comparison between female collegiate badminton players and sedentary controls

“…More specifically, it was claimed that athletes trained under both physical and cognitive loads show a larger modulatory effect on cognitive function than those trained under each individually (Chan, Wong, Liu, Yu, & Yan, 2011;Wang, Chang, Liang, Shih, et al, 2013). In line with this argument, Overney, Blanke, and Herzog (2008) found that tennis players showed superiority in temporal perceptual processing relative to both triathletes and non-athletes, suggesting sport-related cognitive skills benefit through training (e.g., temporal processing in tennis). Interestingly, Chaddock, Neider, Voss, Gaspar, and Kramer (2011) reported that athlete and non-athlete differences in processing speed relates to daily multitasking abilities, indicating that higher efficiency in basic information processing for athletes may improve their capacity to perform daily challenges.…”

Athletic training in badminton players modulates the early C1 component of visual evoked potentials: A preliminary investigation

“…While future research may lead to better ways distinguishing the two views, they may alternatively show that the concept of an intrinsic local V1 network is a fuzzy one. Overney et al (2008) showed that expert tennis players detected tennis balls more accurately than non-players against tennis court background but not landscape background and the two groups were no different in basic perceptual processes, such as detecting coherent motion from random dot matrices and attentional blink. Our results are in line with this study emphasizing the importance of trainingrelated stimuli.…”

Cortical fMRI activation to opponents’ body kinematics in sport-related anticipation: Expert-novice differences with normal and point-light video

“…It is unlikely that expert-novice differences in our study are related to differences in attention systems themselves [17] but rather to the way these are used in the task of analysing body kinematics to predict a shot. We also suggest a strong link between action observation and attention, in that the intentional movements of other human beings can be compelling environmental cues for the direction of attention.…”