Watt, Anthony P, Thomson, Kaivo and Liukkonen, Jarmo (2009) Differences in ball sports athletes speed discrimination skills before and after exercise induced fatigue. Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, 8 (2). pp. 259-264. ISSN 1303-2968

Abstract

Substantial research exists in relation to the effect of fatigue on the cognitive skills of athletes. Very few studies in the sport domain, however, have investigated decision-making time and accuracy in relation to the discrimination of the speed of a moving object following exercise at maximal intensity. The purpose of this study was to examine differences in the pre- and postfatigue speed discrimination skills of elite ballgames athletes to determine if they prioritize accuracy or speed of decisionmaking when physically exhausted. The participants in the study were 163 males (M = 21.17, SD = 4.18) Estonian national level soccer (n = 79), basketball (n = 63) and volleyball (n = 21) players. Peak oxygen uptake (VO2max) was assessed during completion of an incremental exercise test on a treadmill. Speed discrimination stimuli were images of red square-shapes on a grey background presented moving along the sagittal axis at four different virtual velocities on a computer (PC) screen. Repeated measures MANOVA revealed a significant main effect for the decision-making time factor. A second MANOVA revealed a significant main effect for the decision-making accuracy factor. The soccer group made a significantly lower number of errors than the basketball group (p = 0.015) in pre- and post-fatigue decision-making accuracy. The results showed that athletes’ decision-making time decreased and decision-making errors increased after a maximal aerobic capacity exercise task. A comparison of the pre- and post-fatigue speed discrimination skills of experienced basketball, volleyball and soccer players indicated that the only significant difference was for decisionmaking accuracy between the soccer and basketball groups. The current findings clearly demonstrated that the athletes made decisions faster at the expense of accuracy when fatigued.

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