Effect of adding cognitively demanding tasks on soccer skill performance

Area of Science:

• Motor learning and control
• Cognitive psychology
• Sports science

Background:

• Real-world motor tasks often involve multiple simultaneous cognitive and motor demands.
• Understanding how expertise influences performance under dual-task conditions is crucial for training.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of adding cognitively demanding tasks to a motor skill (slalom running) on performance.
• To examine how different levels of expertise (novice, intermediate, expert) moderate this impact.

Main Methods:

• Participants (novice, intermediate, expert female soccer players) performed a slalom run under three conditions: solo, with soccer dribbling, and with dribbling and shape identification.
• Performance was measured by time through the course.
• Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to analyze the data.

Main Results:

• Adding secondary tasks significantly decreased performance in the primary motor task (slalom running).
• The performance decrement was significantly smaller for expert players compared to novice and intermediate players.
• A significant interaction between experimental condition and level of expertise was observed.

Conclusions:

• Increased cognitive load negatively affects motor task performance, particularly when tasks share common processing resources (structural interference).
• Higher levels of expertise mitigate performance decrements in dual-task scenarios due to more automated skills.
• This suggests that skill automation plays a key role in enabling effective dual-task performance.