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Cognitive load impairs athletes' subliminal processing: behavioral and neural insights.
Xuechen Mao1, Jinbin Chen2, Yanglan Yu3
1Department of Physical Education, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, China.
Frontiers in Psychology
|February 13, 2026
Summary
High cognitive load impairs athletes' subliminal processing and neural characteristics, impacting response times and brain activity. Training with cognitive load may enhance athletic performance by optimizing resource capacity.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive psychology
- Neuroscience
- Sports science
Background:
- Athletes in interactive sports face high cognitive loads.
- Cognitive loading is known to impair supraliminal processing.
- Limited research exists on cognitive load's effects on subliminal processing in athletes.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the impact of increased cognitive load on athletes' subliminal processing.
- To examine the neural characteristics associated with cognitive load and subliminal processing.
- To test the hypothesis that cognitive load impairs subliminal processing.
Main Methods:
- Thirty national-level table tennis players participated.
- A dual-task paradigm combined an N-back task (cognitive load) with a masked priming task.
- Behavioral (response time) and electroencephalographic (P3 amplitude, alpha power) data were collected.
Main Results:
- Increasing cognitive load significantly decreased subliminal priming effects in behavior (response time).
- Electrophysiological data showed reduced P3 amplitude and pre-stimulus alpha power with higher cognitive load.
- A negative correlation was found between these neural parameters and cognitive load.
Conclusions:
- Cognitive load impairs athletes' subliminal processing by depleting attentional resources.
- Incorporating cognitive load into training may improve athletic performance.
- Findings deepen understanding of attention resources and subliminal processing, though generalizability is limited by sample characteristics.
Keywords:
cognitive loaddual-task paradigmevent-related potentialsubliminal processingtable tennis athletesMore Related Videos
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