A recently published meta-analysis by researchers at the University of Jyväskylä reveals an advantage in sports-related information processing compared to non-athletes.
A recently published meta-analysis by researchers at the University of Jyväskylä reveals an advantage in sports-related information processing compared to non-athletes. The data consisted of 21 studies involving a total of 1455 participants. Athletes had better working memory than non-athletes and this advantage was further enhanced when athletes were compared to sedentary people.
In cognitive science, there has recently been increasing attention to the relationship between sports expertise and working memory. However, to date, no meta-analysis has compared the working memory performance of athletes and non-athletes. The Active Mind group at the Department of Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, conducted a study to broadly compare the working memory performance of the two groups. They also investigated the role of factors such as the type of sport and performance level on the results.
The working memory advantage for athletes over non-athletes was found across different types of sports and performance levels. Interestingly, this advantage was more pronounced when athletes were contrasted with a sedentary population, compared to the analysis where the sedentary population was excluded from the non-athlete reference group. Doctoral researcher Chenxiao Wu states that most of the studies included in this meta-analysis were well-conducted, with a low risk of bias, and no signs of publication bias.
Read more at University of Jyväskylä - Jyväskylän yliopisto
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