Abstract
Although vision is the dominating sensory system in sports, many situations require multisensory integration. Faster processing of auditory information in the brain may facilitate time-critical abilities such as reaction speed however previous research was limited by generic auditory and visual stimuli that did not consider audio-visual characteristics in ecologically valid environments. This study investigated the reaction speed in response to sport-specific monosensory (visual and auditory) and multisensory (audio-visual) stimulation. Neurophysiological analyses identified the neural processes contributing to differences in reaction speed. Nineteen elite badminton players participated in this study. In a first recording phase, the sound profile and shuttle speed of smash and drop strokes were identified on a badminton court using high-speed video cameras and binaural recordings. The speed and sound characteristics were transferred into auditory and visual stimuli and presented in a lab-based experiment, where participants reacted in response to sport-specific monosensory or multisensory stimulation. Auditory signal presentation was delayed by 26 ms to account for realistic audio-visual signal interaction on the court. N1 and N2 event-related potentials as indicators of auditory and visual information perception/processing, respectively were identified using a 64-channel EEG. Despite the 26 ms delay, auditory reactions were significantly faster than visual reactions (236.6 ms vs. 287.7 ms, p < 0.001) but still slower when compared to multisensory stimulation (224.4 ms, p = 0.002). Across conditions response times to smashes were faster when compared to drops (233.2 ms, 265.9 ms, p < 0.001). Faster reactions were paralleled by a lower latency and higher amplitude of the auditory N1 and visual N2 potentials. The results emphasize the potential of auditory information to accelerate the reaction time in sport-specific multisensory situations. This highlights auditory processes as a promising target for training interventions in racquet sports.
Highlights
High-level athletes participating in ball, team or racquet sports develop exceptional perceptual abilities to extract sensory information from the environment
This study aims to evaluate if auditory information can speed up the visuomotor reaction time in ecologically valid multisensory environments
Post hoc test indicated the fastest reactions in the audio-visual condition (AV vs. V: p < 0.001, AV vs. A: p = 0.002) as well as faster auditory when compared to visual reaction speed (p < 0.001)
Summary
High-level athletes participating in ball, team or racquet sports develop exceptional perceptual abilities to extract sensory information from the environment. Auditory information contributed to movement performance in continuous repetitive movements such as rowing (Schaffert et al, 2020) and was used in acoustic reafference training to improve motor learning of a hurdling task (Pizzera et al, 2017). Together, these findings emphasize the importance of auditory information in sports and the need for research investigating the interaction between visual and auditory information in realistic multisensory environments. Masking natural auditory cues in tennis by grunting sounds systematically affected the anticipated ball trajectory dependent on grunt intensity (Müller et al, 2019) while a manipulation of audio-visual stimulus congruency and sound intensity delays the response time and anticipated length of volleyball serves and tennis strokes, respectively (Cañal-Bruland et al, 2018; Sors et al, 2018a)
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