| As an Olympic sport,Taekwondo is the most popular close-combat sport worldwide,with an extensive base of support.It is a favorite among the younger generation,and has extended to more than 180 countries and regions.It is worth noting that the constant threat from the opponent during Taekwondo competitions is one of its special features.This is especially the case with the continuous improvements in competition rules,as there is a higher requirement for the difficulty and strength of strikes and kicks.Although this has greatly enhanced the level of excitement in the sport,the level of threat from the opponent has also increased.Thus,the athletes need to exhibit greater attentional advantage in order to ensure their safety and to obtain better scores.Visual search is an important approach used by athletes to capture effective information and perceive threatening stimuli in complex environments.The ability of Taekwondo athletes to exhibit above-average visual search efficiency is the key to their rapid decision-making and winning.It is also a manifestation of how they regulate their mental and physical skills in complex environments.However,during Taekwondo competitions,especially in major competitions,Taekwondo athletes usually experience different degrees of anxiety.When this anxiety becomes too intense,it might result in the athletes' maladjustment to the competition environment,thereby decreasing the efficiency of visual processing.Thus,it is necessary to conduct a systematic and in-depth investigation on the influence of threatening stimuli on Taekwondo athletes' visual search efficiency under different levels of anxiety.A review of the literature indicates that there have been studies focusing on thedifferences in visual search patterns between professional and novice athletes in different sports,in order to identify the advantages that professional athletes hold.However,based on current research,there are still deficits in this area.Firstly,although existing studies have shown that anxiety level is an important factor that can influence athletes' visual search efficiency,most of them used trait anxiety level as their experimental variable,as trait anxiety is more stable than state anxiety.Hence,these studies tend to compare the differences in professional athletes from the perspective of the relatively more stable trait anxiety,while often ignoring the interfering effect of state anxiety on athletes' visual search efficiency.Secondly,existing research has seemingly shown that the characteristics of the visual search process are determined by stimulus feature.However,due to environmental constraints,most previous studies have presented textual or graphic stimuli in a static form.Compared to dynamic stimuli,which have higher ecological validity,static stimuli could lose a substantial amount of information available in the competition area,including advance visual information.This is precisely the key information needed by athletes for visual search.Thirdly,threat bias is an advantage in information processing that individuals are naturally equipped with,as it is crucial method for individuals to avoid possible harm.However,past research on athletes in close-combat sports did not consider the influence of threatening stimuli on athletes' visual search efficiency.This is particularly important in Taekwondo where athletes are constantly facing fatal threats from their opponents during the competition,and are in greater need of more efficient visual search to produce reasonable reactions.Fourthly,the features of early processing in athletes' visual search remain unclear.The early processing stage of visual search involves automatic and unconscious perceptual processing.It is not related to reactions,and is minimally influenced by advanced cognitive processing.Thus,it is better able to represent the instinctive features of visual search processing in athletes.However,in previous research on the time course of athletes' cerebral cortex activation,researchers have mostly used the “expert-novice” paradigm to investigate the differences between expert and novice athletes during the entire time course.More focus was placed on athletes' attentional guidance and reaction selection processing.Therefore,the present study is based on feature integration theory,and mainly investigates the visual search efficiency of Taekwondo athletes' through feature presentation,with an emphasis on the early processing mechanisms of visual search.On the basis of behavioral,eye-tracking,and electroencephalographic(EEG)methods,andwith reference to the special features of Taekwondo athletes,we applied event-related potential(ERP)techniques to investigate the visual search efficiency and early processing features of athletes with different anxiety levels,under dynamic and static threatening stimuli.This not only allowed us to explore the visual search features of close-combat athletes under different anxiety levels,but also to investigate the differences between Taekwondo athletes and normal individuals when facing threatening stimuli.Our research could further benefit Taekwondo athletes in targeting their specialized training and effectively increase their processing efficiency of threatening stimuli.The investigation on the early processing stage of visual search in Taekwondo athletes could also bring about a more refined and deeper understanding on the differences between the early visual processing stage of professional athletes and normal university students.It could also further demonstrate that highly-anxious Taekwondo athletes exhibit a processing advantage towards threatening stimuli even in early-stage visual processing.The comparison between the presentation of dynamic and static stimuli will enrich and improve the feature integration theory of visual search,while also widening the scope of future research in the early visual processing advantages of professional athletes.Study 1(Experiment 1 and 2)investigated the influence of threatening stimuli on the visual search efficiency of Taekwondo athletes with different levels of trait-and state-anxiety.Experiment 1 was a behavioral study to examine the impact of static threatening stimuli on the visual search efficiency of Taekwondo athletes with different levels of trait-anxiety.The results showed that: compared to the low trait-anxiety group,Taekwondo athletes with high trait-anxiety had longer reactions times to threatening stimuli;compared to non-threatening stimuli,Taekwondo athletes with trait-anxiety had longer reaction times when the threatening stimuli condition was activated;Taekwondo athletes with trait-anxiety also exhibited lower accuracy above the threshold compared to below the threshold.Although the majority of past studies have investigated athletes with trait-anxiety,the level of state-anxiety level is also an important factor that interferes with their visual search efficiency,especially in major competitions,where the impact of state-anxiety levels may be more significant.Thus,for a more systematic and comprehensive understanding on the impact of anxiety levels on the visual search efficiency of Taekwondo athletes,Experiment 2 used an anxiety-inducing procedure to examine the influence of different state anxiety levels on Taekwondo athletes' visual search efficiency for threatening stimuli.The results showed that under highstate-anxiety,Taekwondo athletes had significantly lower reaction times and reaction accuracy of visual search compared to the low state anxiety group.The result also showed that compared to non-threatening stimuli,Taekwondo athletes had longer reaction times when the threatening stimuli condition was activated.In summary,the results of Experiments 1 and 2 both demonstrated that Taekwondo athletes with high anxiety levels have lower visual search efficiency,and longer reaction times under threatening stimuli.Study 2(Experiment 3 and 4)investigated the influence of dynamic threatening stimuli on the visual search of Taekwondo athletes with different levels of trait-and state-anxiety.In order to enhance the ecological validity of the study,Experiment 3 used videos from real competition scenes,and compared the visual search performance of Taekwondo athletes with trait anxiety between different methods of stimulus presentation.The results showed that: compared to the low trait-anxiety group,athletes with high trait-anxiety had longer reaction times during visual search;compared to static graphic stimuli,Taekwondo athletes showed longer reaction times and lower accuracy during visual search when presented with dynamic video stimuli;under threatening stimuli,athletes exhibited shorter reaction times but also lower reaction accuracy;compared to dynamic stimuli,when Taekwondo athletes were presented with static stimuli,they showed higher reaction accuracy under non-threatening stimuli than under threatening stimuli.In order to verify if the same conclusions could be reached under different state-anxiety levels,Experiment 4 used an anxiety-inducing procedure to investigate the visual search efficiency of Taekwondo athletes with different state-anxiety levels.The results showed that: compared to low state-anxiety,Taekwondo athletes with high-state anxiety showed longer reaction times during visual search;compared to static graphic stimuli,athletes showed longer reaction times to dynamic video stimuli;compared to non-threatening stimuli,athletes showed shorter reaction times but lower accuracy rate to threatening stimuli.In summary,the results of Experiments 4 and 5 indicate that dynamic stimuli had an impact on the visual search efficiency of Taekwondo athletes with different trait-and state-anxiety levels,and that dynamic stimuli resulted in lower visual search efficiency compared to static stimuli.Study 3(Experiment 5 and 6)focused on the neural activity of early visual search processing in highly-anxious Taekwondo athletes under threatening stimuli.The results from Experiments 1,2,3,and 4 demonstrated that highly-anxious Taekwondo athletes had lower visual search efficiency under threatening stimuli.Thus,in Experiment 5,weused the “expert-novice” paradigm and ERP techniques to investigate the P1 and N1 components of early visual search processing in highly-anxious Taekwondo athletes.The result showed that threatening stimuli evoked a larger P1 amplitude in professional athletes,while no difference was observed in the normal group between threatening and non-threatening stimuli.Larger N1 amplitude was evoked in the early visual processing phase of the normal group,while no difference was observed in the N1 component of professional athletes group between threatening and non-threatening stimuli.In order to discuss Taekwondo athletes' visual search features under state anxiety level on early stage dynamic threat processing,In experiment 6,we conducted two experiments(experiment a and b),Used the "expert novice" paradigm,the dynamic video(threat,non threat)as the stimulus material in the real game scene,through event-related potential technology.Experiment a used the low anxiety inducing program,investigated taekwondo athletes visual processing early stage of P1,N1 components under the low state anxiety level(expert group,novice group 20 people).Experiment b used the high anxiety inducing program,investigated taekwondo athletes visual processing early stage of P1,N1 components under the high state anxiety level(expert group,novice group 20 people).The experimental results show that the response time of the expert group under the condition of high threat is shorter than that of the novice group.The P1 amplitude induced by the expert group is shorter and the N1 amplitude is longer under the condition of activating the threat stimulus.In summary,Experiments 5and 6 used ERP techniques,From the static,dynamic,with threatening stimuli and non thhreating stimuli,investigated the early processing of visual search features of Taekwondo athletes under high anxiety state.Based on the above behaviors and the results of ERP,the main conclusions of this study are as follows:(1)The visual search efficiency of Taekwondo athletes was lower at high anxiety level,and the threat stimulus prolonged the attention span of Taekwondo athletes,and it affected the attention relief of threatening information.(2)Compared to the high level of anxiety of Taekwondo athletes,low anxiety level of Taekwondo athletes with a threat stimulus avoidance,interference and quickly from threat stimuli,thus,showing a higher visual search efficiency.(3)After long-term training,Taekwondo athletes sensitivity to threat stimulus and perception level of differentiation were improved,while face threats stimulation,showed an advantage effect of threat stimulus,so as to effectively improve the threat under the stimulus of visual search efficiency.(4)The ecological validity of dynamic threat was more closer to the real competitionsituation,provide more comprehensive information for athletes,but in a large amount of information,to complete the visual search task dynamic video presentation,especially the interference information increases,resulting in a decline in visual search efficiency of Taekwondo athletes.(5)Compared to the novice athletes,expert athletes in the brain has an expert technical,tactical experience,cognitive template is relatively rich,matching and processing with the first visual information faster and more accurate,showed significant effect in the professional advantages of high anxiety.(6)Compared with non threatening information,expert Taekwondo Athletes in the early processing stage under high state anxiety of visual search to threat information is more sensitive,more threats to stimulate alertness,the mechanism of attentional threat stimuli.(7)under dynamic threat,high anxiety of Taekwondo Athletes in the early stages of visual processing,expert group induced P1 amplitude is shorter,the amplitude of N1 is larger,indicating relatively few athletes in the Taekwondo expert attention resources into the early stages of visual processing,higher degree of automation.Based on foundation of past literature,the present study examined the visual search efficiency and early processing features of Taekwondo athletes with different anxiety levels under threatening stimuli.There are three innovative aspects within this study:(1)This was an in-depth exploration on the influence of a special feature--threatening stimuli--on the visual search efficiency of Taekwondo athletes.(2)This study investigated the neural features of early-stage visual search processing among high-anxious Taekwondo athletes under threatening stimuli,and further showed that Taekwondo athletes maintained significant expert advantage even at early-stage visual processing.(3)This study noted the impact of stimulus presentation methods on the visual search efficiency in Taekwondo athletes,and compared dynamic stimuli with static stimuli. |
PDF Full Text Request