Effects Of Visual Motion Tracking Training On Sports Decision Making And Its Neural Mechanism

Sport decision-making is regarded as the whole cognitive process from the individual's perception,selection,processing of information to the resulting actions in the sports context.Further research on sports decision-making will exert an influence both on the effect of individuals' motor skill learning and the performance of athletes in the competition.In the previous studies,the expert-novice paradigm is adopted to study the difference between elite athletes and sport novices in visual search,perceptual prediction and information processing,in order to find out the characteristics and advantages of elite athletes in decision-making.However,few studies can be found on the neural mechanism of training methods and mental interventions of sport decision-making.When a moving object in the surrounding environment attracts the attention of the observer,whose eyes begins to follow the target motion,the visual motion tracking forms.Research in cognitive psychology reveal that visual motion tracking affects actions like predictive tracking,catch-up saccades,space position and time to contact or collision(TTC)etc.,which involves representation and prediction of spatial and temporal characteristics of moving objects.Sports psychologist's research show that athletes can benefit from psychological interventions measured to adapt to their cognitive processing more than other interventions.Tennis is a kind of sport involving highly strategic and open skill,which requires a relatively high demand for individual sport decision-making,and an important research field in sport decision-making.Due to this,“Visual motion Tracking Training System 1.0” is developed by means of modern computer technology,which is based on human visual information processing theory and both smooth pursuit task and spatial perception task paradigms.The new system is used in the sports decision-making experiments to train college students of with no tennis experience and professional tennis players.The effects of visual motion tracking training on sports decision-making is discussed from the perspective of behavior and cognitive processing.The study may provide technical innovation to cultivating tennis beginners' awareness of “looking at the ball” and concentration and to the improvement of teaching and training methods.It may also provide reliable and effective tools for selection,evaluation,diagnosis and training on mental abilities of excellent tennis players.Meanwhile,it may improve the theoretical studies of sports psychology on players' prediction and decision making ability which need both physical conditioning and mental abilities,and extend cognitive sport expertise system theory to provide references for future studies of athletes' brain.Study?32 tennis beginners were divided into the training group(8 male,8 female)and the control group(8 male,8 female).After the training group finished visual motion tracking training,all participants' behavioral and electroencephalogram(EEG)data were recorded during sport decision-making experiment by tennis sports decision-making test system and event-related potential(ERP)technique.The training effect on sport decision-making and its neural mechanism was investigated.The results showed that:(1)Visual motion tracking training could effectively help increase beginners' judging accuracy rate in decision-making task,especially for judging routes when 100 ms after batting and for judging fall point when 120 ms after batting.(2)Visual motion tracking training cannot improved even prolonged beginners' reaction time of decision-making,especially reaction time for judging routes when 100 ms after batting and for judging fall point when 120 ms after batting.(3)By analyzing ERPs waveforms and scalp topographies,significant differences had been found between the training group and the control group during beginners' route judging experiment in the amplitude and latency of P1,N1,N2 and P3 among early ERP components.The training subjects poured more cognitive resources quickly into decision making task in the early stage for effective concentration and precise information processing and also rationally divided mental resources in early processing,which demonstrated a conservation of cognitive resources in contrast with the control group.After display of video stimuli,significant differences had been found between the training group and the control group in the amplitude and latency of P1,N1,N2 and P3.It was found out that the training subjects take more time and keep high level use of mental resources to maintain and process working memory.Hemispheric laterality effects existed in the training group and decision making was completed by the combination of instinctive and logic thinking.(4)By analyzing ERPs waveforms and scalp topographies,significant differences had been found between the training group and the control group during beginners' fall point judging experiment in the amplitude and latency of P1,N1,N2 and P3 among early ERP components.The training subjects poured more mental resources quickly into spatial concentration of key information at the early stage of stimulation and formed continuous object appearances of effective information.After display of video stimuli,significant differences had been found between the training group and the control group in the amplitude and latency of P1,N1,N2 and P3.It was discovered that the training subjects pour into more cognitive resources and more processing time at the later stage.Study? 33 professional tennis players were divided into the One-time training group(9 male,2 female),the One-week training group(8 male,3 female)and the control group(9 male,2 female).After the training group finished visual motion tracking training,all participants' behavioral and electroencephalogram(EEG)data were recorded during sport decision-making experiment by tennis sports decision-making test system and event-related potential(ERP)technique.The training effect on sport decision-making and its neural mechanism was investigated.The results showed that:(1)Neither the one-time or the one-week training effectively improved the tennis players' judging accuracy and reaction time while completing the decision making task of route judging.(2)Both the one-time and one-week visual training effectively improved the tennis players' judging accuracy while completing the decision making task of fall points judging,especially accuracy rate for fall points judging when 100 ms and 360 ms after batting.However,neither training could effectively reduce the reaction time of players' fall points judging.(3)By analyzing ERPs waveforms and scalp topographies,significant differences had been found between the training group and the control group during players' route judging experiment in the amplitude and latency of P1,N1,N2 and P3 among early ERP components.The training subjects saved cognitive resources of early spatial attention and showed advantages of target recognition stimulus and processing of early cognition becomes faster.For further training,the early processing advantage became more distinctive.After display of video materials,significant differences had been found between the training group and the control group in the amplitude and latency of P1,N1,N2 and P3.It was found that the training subjects used mental resources more economically and rationally.Furthermore,cognitive processing advantage of hemispheric laterality could be found in the components of later stage in the experimental group.(4)By analyzing ERPs waveforms and scalp topographies,significant differences had been found between the training group and the control group during players' fall points judging experiment in the amplitude and latency of P1,N1,N2 and P3 among early ERP components.The training subjects with visual motion tracking training effectively increased the use of cognitive resources of early spatial attention direction and also raised recognition and coding processing speed,which became more distinctive while there was longer training of visual motion tracking.After display of video stimuli,significant differences had been found between the training group and the control group in the amplitude and latency of P1,N1,N2 and P3.It was found that players' with visual motion tracking training used mental resources more rationally at the stages of information processing and decision making.Furthermore,cognitive processing advantage of hemispheric laterality could be found in the components of later stage in the experimental group.Study ? 60 college students without tennis learning experience were chosen to participate in a course experiment combined with visual training to find out the effects and value of “Visual Sports Track Training System 1.0” in practical teaching of beginners.Participants were divided into the training group(15 male,15 female)and the control group(15 male,15 female).The results showed that: After eight-week teaching and visual motion tracking training,basic tennis techniques of college students in the training group,including forehand and backhand drawing the ball,forehand and backhand volleys,footwork and movement,looking at the ball had been improved significantly,especially the volley which shortened the teaching cycle of tennis beginners effectively.Based on the above results and dissuasions,the following conclusions are drawn as follow:(1)According to the behavioral results,visual motion tracking training can effectively improve the decision-making accuracy of tennis beginners and athletes,but cannot effectively reduce the reaction time.(2)According to the EEG results,visual motion tracking training can effectively increase cognitive resources input of tennis beginners and athlete to early visual cognitive processing,making the allocation of cognitive resources more reasonable and more targeted.Thus,more cognitive resources input and more processing time could be occupied,and it is beneficial to the combination of the left and right hemispheres.(3)Teaching experiment revealed that the visual motion tracking training have a promoting effect to the actual teaching and also can effectively shorten the teaching cycle of tennis beginners.