Selective enhancement of attentional networks in college table tennis athletes: a preliminary investigation

Biye Wang; Wei Guo; Chenglin Zhou

doi:10.7717/peerj.2762

Selective enhancement of attentional networks in college table tennis athletes: a preliminary investigation

PeerJ. 2016 Dec 6:4:e2762. doi: 10.7717/peerj.2762. eCollection 2016.

Authors

Biye Wang¹, Wei Guo¹, Chenglin Zhou¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Sport Psychology, School of Kinesiology, Shanghai University of Sport , Shanghai , China.

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to investigate the characteristics of the attentional network in college table tennis athletes. A total of 65 college students categorized as table tennis athlete group or non-athlete group participated in the study. All participants completed the attentional network test (ANT) which measured the alerting, orienting and executive control networks. The results showed a significant difference between the athlete and non-athlete group for executive control network (p < 0.01), while no differences were observed for alerting (p > 0.05) or orienting (p > 0.05) networks. These results combined suggest that college table tennis athletes exhibited selectively enhanced executive control of attentional networks.

Keywords: Attentional network; Attentional network test; Table tennis athlete.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers 31571151); and the Graduate Education Innovation Project of Shanghai University of Sport (grant number yjscx2016004). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.