Hiroki Nakamoto and Shiro Mori
Faculty of Physical Fitness, National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Kanoya, Japan
Citation
Nakamoto, H., Mori, S. (2010). The influence of sport-specific experiences during the psychological refractory period in the Go/Nogo double stimulation task. International Journal of Sport Psychology, 41(3), 243-254.
Abstract
This study investigated the influence of sport-specific experiences during the psychological refractory period (PRP) that induce a delayed second response in successive responses. The participants were baseball, basketball, gymnasts, and sedentary students. A Go/Nogo double stimulation task was employed in which 2 visual stimuli were presented in close succession. In the situations requiring response execution to both the first and second stimuli, the baseball players demonstrated a significantly shorter delay compared with the gymnasts and nonathletes. These difference were also observed in the situations requiring response inhibition to the first stimulus and execution to the second stimulus. These PRP differences were comparable to the RT difference for the first stimulus among groups. These results indicate that the athletic expertise can reduce the PRP interference. This is mainly due to the shortening of the duration of processing the first reaction, not the elimination of bottleneck.
Keywords: Expertise, Psychological refractory period, Response-selection bottleneck