Abstract
The aim of the present study was to examine the relationship between basic cognitive functions and sport-specific motor skills in elite youth soccer players. A total of 15 elite youth soccer players aged 11–13 years performed a computer-based test battery measuring the attention window (AW), perceptual load (PL), working memory capacity (WMC), and multiple object tracking (MOT). Another set of tests was used to asses speed abilities and football-specific technical skills (sprint, change of direction, dribbling, ball control, shooting, and juggling). Spearman’s correlation tests showed that the diagonal AW was positively associated with dribbling skills (rs = 0.656) which indicates that a broader AW could be beneficial for highly demanding motor skills like dribbling. WMC was positively related to dribbling (rs = 0.562), ball control (rs = 0.669), and ball juggling (rs = 0.727). Additionally, the cumulated score of all cognitive tests was positively related to the cumulated motor test score (rs = 0.614) which supports the interplay of physical and psychological skills. Our findings highlight the need for more, and especially longitudinal, studies to enhance the knowledge of cognition-motor skill relationships for talent identification, talent development, and performance in soccer.
Highlights
High-demand sports require extraordinary physiological capacities combined with outstanding abilities in the areas of motor control, perception, and cognitive functioning
The present study aims to enrich the literature on cognitive functions in youth elite soccer players by studying the interplay between these functions and motor/technical skills for the first time
The aim of this study was to investigate the relation between cognitive functions [working memory, perceptual load (PL), multiple object tracking (MOT), and attention window (AW)] and soccer specific motor skills in soccer players aged between 11 and 13
Summary
High-demand sports require extraordinary physiological capacities combined with outstanding abilities in the areas of motor control, perception, and cognitive functioning. Previous research mostly focused on the cognitive skills of elite adult athletes (Mann et al, 2007; Voss et al, 2010; Scharfen and Memmert, 2019). In terms of elite youth athletes, especially soccer players, current research mainly studied – on the one hand – the physical or physiological prerequisites of elite youth soccer players (Unnithan et al, 2012; Waldron and Murphy, 2013; Abade et al, 2014; Murr et al, 2018) or – on the other hand – the psychological prerequisites, that is the cognitive functions of elite youth soccer players (Verburgh et al, 2014, 2016; Balakova et al, 2015; Huijgen et al, 2015; Vestberg et al, 2017) in isolation. The present study is unique as it connects basic psychological (cognitive functions) with motor (soccer-specific motor skills) aspects of elite youth soccer players
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