Executive function as a predictor of soccer success

Sorry for the brief hiatus from the blog, but I am glad to be back and blogging again. I have lots of thoughts to share, so without further ado, I’ll get right down to it.

I am not sure if you came across an article in the NY Times a few days ago that talked about the findings from a study (Vestberg et al., 2012) on brain function in soccer players. This study is interesting to me because it talks about executive function.

Executive function is a fairly heterogeneous construct that refers to “control processes responsible for planning, assembling, coordinating, sequencing, and monitoring other cognitive operations” (Salthouse, Atkinson, and Berish, 2003). The idea is that executive function is an orchestrator of many cognitive processes and helps co-ordinate their activity. Working memory, inhibition, attentional capacity, and inductive reasoning are a few of the cognitive processes controlled by executive function. Neuroimaging studies have shown the neural substrates of executive function to be fairly heterogeneous, but generally point to the frontal lobes of the brain, as well as the parietal areas as loci (see recent review by Collette, 2006).

The goal of the study was to see if executive function could predict success in soccer players. Executive function was a measure of choice because, as the authors point out, good soccer players have to use some of the many cognitive processes characterized by executive function a lot of the time. The player has to use “excellent spatial attention, divided attention,working memory and mentalizing capacity” and “quickly adapt, change strategy and inhibit responses” (Vestberg et al., 2012). First, researchers compared performance on tests of executive function (part of the D-KEFS or the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System) across high and low division soccer players. They found that soccer players in the high division group had better scores on the tests than those in the low division group, even after controlling for age, position of play, and level of education. Both divisions performed better than standard (normative) performance on these tests. Two seasons later, they correlated the results from the tests of executive function to commonly used objective measures of soccer success – goals and assists made by these players during the interim. They found moderate significant correlations between the ‘points’ derived mathematically from the goals and assists and performance on measures of executive function, indicating that the tests of executive function they used could successfully predict success in soccer.

Notably, the moderate correlation they reported still only explains about 29% variance in objective measures of soccer success, suggesting that many other factors may also contribute to successful performance in soccer. I am not a soccer fan, but I am speculating that these could be factors like training and indicators of fitness and health.

Does this mean that soccer players are smarter? Or that soccer players who are better at the game are smarter? Not really. Generally, tests of executive function have not shown a relationship to general intelligence or IQ.  I don’t think that there is anything special about soccer, or soccer players, as distinctive from players of other sports as it relates to the ability to strategize, plan, update information in your memory throughout the game, or inhibit instinctive responses, use inductive reasoning, or any number of things commonly associated with executive function. If you did a study with chess players, or even with cricket players, you would likely find similar results. Then does this mean that playing sports can enhance your brainpower? I doubt it will enhance your brainpower any more than playing Sudoku or learning a new language – all activities that are mentally stimulating. It likely will make you more fit!

Does executive function change with age? Yes, executive function is one of the many cognitive processes that has been shown to decline with age. As I mentioned in an earlier post, there is sufficient evidence that there are interactions between sensory and cognitive processes in the aging human auditory system. Perhaps this will make an interesting topic for another post sometime. Enjoy reading and a penny for your thoughts!

 

REFERENCES:

1. Vestberg, T., Gustafson, R., Maurex, L. et al. (2012). Executive Functions Predict the Success of Top-Soccer Players. PLoS One, 7, 4, e34741.
2. Collette, F., Hogge, M., Salmon, E., and Van der Linden, M. (2006). Exploration of the neural substrates of executive functioning by functional neuroimaging. Neuroscience. 139, 209–221.
3. Salthouse, T.A., Atkinson, T.M., and Berish, D.E. (2003). Executive functioning as a potential mediator of age-related cognitive decline in normal adults. Journal of Experimental Psychology. 132, 4, 566-594.

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