The Effect Of Perceptual Load On Subliminal Processing In Table Tennis Players

Subliminal processing is a special form of unconscious processing,which refers to the process of processing the stimulus presented below the sensory threshold.Although individuals cannot perceive the stimulus below the sensory threshold,this stimulus can affect individual behavior in an unconscious way.Through taking badminton or table tennis players as subjects,previous studies found that special sports experience could promote one’s subliminal processing ability,and open skill athletes could show excellent subliminal processing ability.It was found that the subliminal processing ability of open skill athletes did not exist in all situations,and the priming effect would be significantly affected when the task difficulty or perceptual load increased.According to Lavie’s perceptual load theory(PLT),the supraliminal and subliminal stimulus were in competition with one another for finite attention resource.In the masked priming paradigm,which was widely used to study subliminal processing,the limited attention resource could be occupied when the perceptual load of one or more cognitive tasks was high and priming effect might reduce since the subliminal primes were in short of attention resources.Based on existing researches,the following problems should be emphasized.Firstly,there were a few researches focused on the influence of perceptual load on the subliminal processing,and the results were inconsistent.Secondly,the neural mechanism of perceptual load affecting athletes’ subliminal processing remains unclear.Lastly,the problem of whether athletes’ subliminal processing superiority could be transferable has not been effectively solved.Based on above-mentioned information,the perceptual load theory(PLT)and the visual dual pathway model(DPM)were taken as the theoretical basis.The dual task paradigm which combined the masked priming task and the flanker task was adopted and experience-related and experience-independent stimuli of table tennis were used.Professional table tennis athletes and age-matched college students were recruited as subjects,and event-related potential(ERP)was used to answer the following four questions.(1)Could perceptual load affect the subliminal processing of table tennis players?(2)In the masked priming paradigm,does the perceptual load affecting the subliminal visual processing of table tennis players comes from the prime or target stimulus?(3)What is the neural mechanism in subliminal processing of table tennis players under different perceptual loads?(4)If the perceptual load of subliminal prime does not affect the subliminal processing of table tennis players,could this ability be transferred to the experience-independent area? In a bid to solve these problems,we mainly carried out four studies.Study 1,which included experiment 1,explored whether perceptual load would affect the subliminal processing of table tennis players.Study 2,which included experiment 2,3 and 4,explored the source of perceptual load affecting the performance of subliminal processing by adjusting the perceptual load of materials in different stages in the masked priming paradigm.Study 3,which included experiment 5 and 6,further explored the neural mechanism in the process in which perceptual load affect subliminal processing of table tennis players based on study 1 and 2.Based on study 1,2 and 3,study 4 which included experiment 7 discussed whether the perceptual load has a similar impact on subliminal processing of table tennis players when using the experience-independent stimulus,compared with studies using experience-related materials.The results were as follows.Firstly,the subliminal priming effect of table tennis players was significantly affected by perceptual load when manipulating the perceptual load of prime stimulus and target stimulus at the same time in experiment 1,and the priming effect disappeared under high load.Secondly,the load affecting subliminal processing came from the target stimulus in the masked priming paradigm,in other words,the change of perceptual load of prime did not affect the subliminal priming effect of table tennis players.They showed excellent unconscious control ability.Because the college students were not sensitive to sports-related stimuli,no matter what adjustment was made to the perceptual load of the prime or the target stimulus,no obvious priming effect was observed.Thirdly,in the subliminal processing of experience-related materials,the perceptual load of target stimuli was regulated.Under the condition of high load,P200 effect was observed in both athlete group and non-athlete group,but the change of prime load did not cause P200 effect in both groups.The different combination of perceptual load and prime-target consistency could cause the change of P300 component amplitude.The dorsal pathway of table tennis players was effectively activated when the target load was at a high level.The dorsal and ventral pathway of table tennis players could be both effectively activated when the perceptual load of subliminal prime was at a high level,and the medial frontal lobe and anterior cingulate cortex were effectively activated.For athlete group,the brain region with the greatest difference between high and low perceptual load conditions located in the superior temporal gyrus when the prime was consistent with the target stimulus.Lastly,when processing the experienceindependent color stimulus subliminally,both table tennis players and college students showed significant priming effect under the condition of low prime load,while only the athlete group showed stable priming effect under the high load condition.Combining these results,we get the following conclusions:(1)Perceptual load could affect the subliminal processing of table tennis players.(2)The perceptual load of target stimulus could affect the subliminal processing of table tennis players in masked priming paradigm,and the perceptual load of subliminal prime would not affect the subliminal processing of table tennis players.Thus,table tennis players perceived good unconscious control ability and had certain cognitive superiority when compared with college students.(3)When the perceptual load of subliminal prime increases,the dorsal pathway and ventral pathway of table tennis players could be both effectively activated.These two pathways cooperate to complete the subliminal processing.(4)The long-term sports training progress promoted the subliminal processing ability of table tennis players to migrate to the experience-independent field.