Perceptual-cognitive performance of youth soccer players in a 360°-environment – Differences between age groups and performance levels
Introduction
Soccer players must constantly make rapid decisions based on the positions and movements of teammates and opponents. Extraordinary perceptual-cognitive performance is required in order to deal with these demands.
Studies that investigate the perceptual-cognitive skills of athletes generally fall within one of two theoretical frameworks: the expert performance approach (for a review, see Mann et al., 2007) or the cognitive component skill approach (for a review, see Scharfen & Memmert, 2019; Voss et al., 2010). Within the expert performance approach athletes’ perceptual-cognitive skills are often assessed using images or video sequences of sports-specific situations. Several studies have reported extraordinary skills of athletes in areas like visual search behavior or sports-specific decision-making (Mann et al., 2007). However, test performance is often influenced by declarative or tactical knowledge, making it difficult to identify the role of basic cognitive functions. The cognitive component skills approach attempts to examine athletes’ fundamental perceptual-cognitive functions. By using domain-generic, context-unspecific information researchers can investigate the importance of general cognitive processes in athletic performance. Within this approach, the results of two meta-analyses suggest superior perceptual-cognitive skills of athletes compared to non-athletes and elite athletes compared to non-elite athletes (Scharfen & Memmert, 2019; Voss et al., 2010).
Within the field of perceptual-cognitive functions, visual attention of athletes has received a lot of interest in the scientific literature (for a review see Memmert, 2009). Distinctive abilities in the area of visual attention enable athletes to attend multiple stimuli simultaneously, to focus their attention on the relevant features of a given situation, or to inhibit certain stimuli in favor of others (Memmert, 2009). In soccer, for example, visual attention can be used to accurately track the movements of teammates and opponents in offense and defense in order to decide on appropriate actions. Another area that has also gained recent popularity within the cognitive component skills approach concerns athletes’ higher-order cognitive functions, known as executive functions (e.g., Elferink-Gemser et al., 2018; Krenn et al., 2018; Lundgren et al., 2016). Executive functions are top-down cognitive control processes, that modulate various cognitive subprocesses and thereby support the regulation of thoughts and behaviors in favor of desirable outcomes (Diamond, 2013; Miyake et al., 2000).
Several findings suggest that team sport athletes exhibit specific perceptual-cognitive profiles. In comparison to non-athletes and novices they seem to be characterized by extraordinary skills in the areas of visual attention (Alves et al., 2013; Anzeneder & Bösel, 1998; Hüttermann et al., 2014; Kioumourtzoglou et al., 1998; Meng et al., 2019) as well as executive functions (Jacobson & Matthaeus, 2014).
Furthermore, the relationship between perceptual-cognitive performance and sports performance has also been investigated (Lundgren et al., 2016; Poltavski & Biberdorf, 2015). Specifically in soccer, positive relationships between measures of executive functions and sports performance in both youth and adult populations have been found (Vestberg et al., 2012, 2017), indicating that executive functions may play an important and continuous role throughout the career of athletes. Sakamoto et al. (2018) reported that players who were accepted into an elite youth soccer program based on their soccer performance also scored higher on general executive function tests than players who were rejected. Previous studies have also reported differences in perceptual-cognitive skills between athletes of different performance levels and age groups. For example, better performance in executive functions tests of elite players compared to lower-level players was found in both senior (Vestberg et al., 2012) and youth soccer players (Huijgen et al., 2015). Differences between players of different performance levels have also been shown in attention tests in the past in favor of elite players at both the senior (Heppe et al., 2016) and the youth level (Verburgh et al., 2014).
In youth sports the consideration of age trajectories in perceptual-cognitive performance is particularly important. Here, a positive relationship between age and executive functions in a large cohort of elite youth soccer players has been found (Beavan et al., 2020). Increasing age revealed gradually smaller differences in executive functions between subsequent age groups, with a performance plateau evident around adulthood (Beavan et al., 2020). Other studies with youth soccer players also found improvements with age in visual skills, e.g., in peripheral perception (Vänttinen et al., 2010; Ward & Williams, 2003). These age effects on the perceptual-cognitive performance of youth soccer players are consistent with general findings regarding the development of cognitive functions, indicating possible improvements into young adulthood (Huizinga et al., 2006).
Overall, the findings on the perceptual-cognitive performance of athletes of different sports performance levels and age groups suggest that perceptual-cognitive functions might play a crucial role for talent identification and talent development in youth soccer (Huijgen et al., 2015; Sakamoto et al., 2018; Vestberg et al., 2017). However, previous studies on differences in perceptual-cognitive skills between soccer players of different age groups and performance levels have, in our view, three major limitations: First, age differences in relevant perceptual-skills have not been studied in sufficient detail across a wide age range. Second, elite players have often been compared with players of a very low performance level. However, an important question in terms of talent identification and talent development in soccer is to what extent players at the highest performance level differ from those whose soccer performance level is only slightly lower. This question has not yet been answered sufficiently with regard to perceptual-cognitive functions. Third, in most studies only very specific perceptual-cognitive functions were assessed in a very isolated manner, which does not correspond to the complex demands of real-life sporting situations (Scharfen & Memmert, 2019; Voss et al., 2010).
The current study aims to make a valuable contribution to previous research on perceptual-cognitive skills of youth soccer players by addressing several crucial limitations in the current literature:
First, we aim to examine age-related differences in perceptual-cognitive performance in more detail. For this purpose, the current study examines a large, representative sample of high-level youth soccer players of all age groups from U12 to U23. The examination of players of successive age groups across a broad age range allows for a complete and thorough investigation of age-related differences in perceptual-cognitive skills of youth soccer players on their road to senior soccer.
Second, we aim to investigate to what extent elite and sub-elite players differ in regard to their perceptual-cognitive abilities. It is particularly important to us to gather meaningful information about differences between players within an overall high level of soccer performance. For this reason, we compare elite players of the highest level with sub-elite players of an only slightly lower soccer performance level. Here, the composition of the sample allows us not only to address the question if, but also in which age ranges exactly differences in perceptual-cognitive performance between elite and sub-elite players might occur.
Third, we aim to capture perceptual-cognitive performance with a measurement tool that better reflects the demands of the dynamic environment that athletes encounter in-game. Soccer players must constantly extract information from a complex 360°-environment. Therefore, in the present study the athletes will be tested in such a dynamic 360°- environment. Specifically, perceptual-cognitive performance will be assessed using a 360°-version of the established multiple object tracking (MOT) paradigm, which captures the ability to track multiple targets simultaneously (Ehmann et al., 2021; Pylyshyn & Storm, 1988). Performance in classical MOT tasks is related to visual attention (Huang et al., 2012) and working memory (Oksama & Hyönä, 2004; Trick et al., 2012), with the latter being a core executive function that allows the holding, updating, and manipulation of information in one’s mind (Baddeley, 2012; Diamond, 2013). Significant correlations to both constructs could also be found for the 360°-version of the task (360-MOT) (Ehmann et al., 2021). The usefulness of the MOT-paradigm has been repeatedly demonstrated in diagnostics and training of athletes (Chermann et al., 2018; Faubert, 2013; Mangine et al., 2014; Mejane et al., 2019; Romeas et al., 2016; Zhang et al., 2009). Compared to classical versions of the task, the 360°-version used in this study can be seen as an approximation to the perceptual-cognitive demands in soccer. The possibility for players to express their abilities more naturally in an immersive 360°-environment is an important step towards more ecologically valid measures of cognitive performance.
Overall, the findings regarding the perceptual-cognitive skills of athletes of different performance levels and age groups suggest the following hypotheses: First, we expect better perceptual-cognitive performance with increasing age (Beavan et al., 2020; Huizinga et al., 2006). Second, we expect elite youth soccer players to show better perceptual-cognitive performance than sub-elite youth players (Scharfen & Memmert, 2019; Voss et al., 2010).
Section snippets
Participants
A total of 292 male youth soccer players aged between 10 and 23 years (M = 14.8, SD = 2.8) participated in the study. The sample consisted of elite and sub-elite players of the age groups U12, U13, U14, U15, U16, U17, U19, and U23 from two youth academies of German professional soccer clubs. The elite youth players (n = 145) were part of the academy of a first division club, while the sub-elite players (n = 147) were part of the academy of a second division club. The elite players in the age
Results
The 360-MOT results for all age groups of both performance levels are shown in Table 2 (see also Fig. 2). There was a statistically significant relationship between 360-MOT performance and age (rs = 0.33, p < .001), as well as soccer experience (rs = 0.31, p < .001). The results of Wilcoxon rank sum tests revealed no statistically significant differences in age (W = 9866, p = .602, r = 0.03) or soccer experience (W = 9747, p = .73, r = 0.02) between the elite and sub-elite group.
After checking
Discussion
In the present study, differences in perceptual-cognitive performance between youth soccer players of different age groups and performance levels were investigated in a dynamic 360°-environment. The analyses revealed age-related differences in the critical ability to track multiple moving objects on 360°. Significant differences were evident between the players of the youngest age group U12 and all age groups from U16 upwards as well as between players of the younger age groups (i.e., U13 or
Conclusion
The current study provides valuable insights on perceptual-cognitive functions in high-level youth sports. Using a perceptual-cognitive task that closely resembles the demands of the dynamic 360°-environment of soccer, a large sample of elite and sub-elite players of a very broad age range was examined. The results suggest age-related differences in the perceptual-cognitive performance of youth soccer players. The expected differences between elite and sub-elite players were particularly
Author statement
Paul Ehmann: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing – Original Draft, Writing – Review & Editing, Project Administration.
Adam Beavan: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – Review & Editing.
Jan Spielmann: Methodology, Writing – Review & Editing, Project Administration.
Jan Mayer: Methodology, Resources, Supervision.
Stefan Altmann: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – Review & Editing.
Ludwig Ruf: Methodology, Visualization.
Sonja Rohrmann:
Declaration of competing interest
Given their role as an Editorial Board member, Englert C. had no involvement in the peer-review of this article and had no access to information regarding its peer-review. All other authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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Perceptual-cognitive performance of youth soccer players in a 360°-environment – An investigation of the relationship with soccer-specific performance and the effects of systematic training
2022, Psychology of Sport and ExerciseCitation Excerpt :In summary, the relevance of perceptual-cognitive functions that enable the visual tracking of spatial positions and movements in a 360°-environment and the effects of a systematic perceptual-cognitive training intervention in such a high-fidelity environment will be investigated in a group of youth soccer players. Based on previous findings (Ehmann et al., 2022; Vestberg et al., 2012, 2017), we expect positive relationships between perceptual-cognitive performance in the 360-MOT task and the soccer-specific performance measures in the 360°-passing task and the small-sided game. Based on theoretical considerations of transfer effects of representative perceptual-cognitive training (Hadlow et al., 2018) and previous findings on MOT training (Fleddermann et al., 2019; Parsons et al., 2016; Romeas et al., 2016) positive effects of a 360-MOT training on perceptual-cognitive performance and soccer-specific performance in the 360°-passing task and the small-sided game are expected.
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