Influence of sports expertise level on attention in multiple object tracking

Background: This study aimed to investigate whether performance in a multiple object tracking (MOT) task could be improved incrementally with sports expertise, and whether differences between experienced and less experienced athletes, or non-athletes, were modulated by load. Methods: We asked 22 elite and 20 intermediate basketball players, and 23 non-athletes, to perform an MOT task under three attentional load conditions (two, three, and four targets). Accuracies were analyzed to examine whether different levels of sports expertise influence MOT task performance. Results: The elite athletes displayed better tracking performance compared with the intermediate or non-athletes when tracking three or four targets. However, no significant difference was found between the intermediate athletes and the non-athletes. Further, no differences were observed among the three groups when tracking two targets. Discussion: The results suggest that the effects of expertise in team ball sports could transfer to a non-sports-specific attention task. These transfer effects to general cognitive functions occur only in elite athletes with extensive training under higher attentional load.