This study aimed to assess the learning capacities of elite athlete populations compared to amateur athletes and non-athlete university students on a neutral cognitive task (NeuroTracker).

What Was Studied

308 participants were tested on 15 distributed NeuroTracker sessions, grouped as 102 elite level team-sport athletes consisting of 51 professional soccer players (English Premier League), 21 professional ice hockey players (National Hockey League) and 30 professional rugby players (French Top 14 Rugby League). 173 elite amateurs consisted of 136 NCAA university sports programs (USA), and 37 European Olympic training centre. Finally, 33 non-athlete university students (Université de Montréal) were also included in this study.

What Was Found

The results showed a clear distinction between the level of athletic performance and corresponding fundamental mental capacities for learning an abstract and demanding dynamic scene task. Elite athletes showed significantly higher baselines than the other groups, along with substantially superior learning rates. The amateur athletes group similarly showed superior learning rates over the non-athletes’ student group.

Takeaways

The findings with these large study populations demonstrate that NeuroTracker is a valuable tool for investigating the advanced cognitive learning characteristic of athletes, shown for the first time in this research domain.

‍

Reference: Jocelyn Faubert. ‘Professional athletes have extraordinary skills for rapidly learning complex and neutral dynamic visual scenes’ Scientific Reports 3, 1154 (2013).

Looking for more information on NeuroTracker research? Feel free to contact us.