An Exploration of the Role of Social Roles and Rewards in the Monitoring of Athletes' Action Outcome

Abstract

After years of a dedicated training life, athletes accumulate a wealth of motor skills and knowledge in the sport to which they belong. This study reviews previous research on movement monitoring to examine the effects of social roles and rewards on athletes' movement monitoring. In the field of cognitive neuroscience, the FRN and OFRN are early components of action outcome monitoring, which are indicators of action outcome monitoring of self and others, while the P300 and OP300 are late components of action outcome monitoring, which are indicators of the emotional and motivational evaluation of action outcomes. The amplitude of the FRN and P300 feedback to oneself and its topography are moderated by social roles and are more responsive to teammates than to opponents. The feedback of reward information has a strong influence on the monitoring of action outcomes, as reward information influences the release of dopamine through the reward loop, which further alters the activation of the ACC, which in turn influences the FRN, thus influencing the monitoring of action outcomes for oneself or others. People can more accurately understand the movements they have mastered, i.e. the movements present in their self-motor representations, than unfamiliar movements. The brain can interpret immediate incoming sensorimotor and contextual information based on its own experience, and anticipate the outcome of others' movements, or understand the intentions implied in the movements.The impact of rewards on outcome monitoring is greater for athletes than for the general population in terms of processing more information about gains and losses than about gains and losses; social roles (self, teammates, opponents) and rewards (morerewards, less rewards, more penalties, less penalties) affect athletes' outcome monitoring, in terms of processing more information about gains and losses of self and teammates than about gains and losses of opponents.