The impact of video speed on situation awareness and prefrontal cortex activation in soccer players

Situation awareness (SA) is a core construct supporting effective decision-making and performance in dynamic environments and is strongly shaped by temporal constraints. However, it remains unclear how temporal constraints influence the three levels of SA-perception, comprehension, and projection-in sport contexts, and whether expertise modulates these effects in both behavioral performance and neural activity. The present study provides the first level-specific examination of SA under temporal constraints by presenting real-game soccer footage under a normal condition (1.0x) and a temporal-constraint condition (1.5x), while simultaneously recording prefrontal cortical activity using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Behaviorally, athletes outperformed amateurs across all three SA levels under both video speed conditions, with performance remaining stable despite the increased video speed. Neurally, during perception, activation in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, frontal eye fields, and frontopolar area (FPA) decreased at 1.5x relative to 1.0x in both groups. During projection, athletes exhibited reduced FPA activation at 1.5x relative to 1.0x and showed lower FPA activation than amateurs at 1.5x. In addition, brain-behavior correlation analyses revealed that, at 1.5x, projection performance in amateurs was positively associated with prefrontal activation. Together, these findings indicate an expertise-related advantage in SA under both normal and temporally constrained conditions, accompanied by neural efficiency in prefrontal processing. While behavioral performance remained stable across SA levels, temporal constraints revealed hierarchical and expertise-dependent differences in neural processing. Specifically, increased automaticity was evident at the perception level in both groups, whereas automaticity at the projection level was observed only in soccer athletes.