Differences in ball sports athletes speed discrimination skills before and after exercise induced fatigue

Substantial research exists in relation to the effect of fatigue onthe cognitive skills of athletes. very few studies in the sportdomain, however, have investigated decision-making time andaccuracy in relation to the discrimination of the speed of a movingobject following exercise at maximal intensity. the purposeof this study was to examine differences in the pre- and postfatiguespeed discrimination skills of elite ballgames athletes todetermine if they prioritize accuracy or speed of decisionmakingwhen physically exhausted. the participants in the studywere 163 males (m = 21.17, sd = 4.18) estonian national levelsoccer (n = 79), basketball (n = 63) and volleyball (n = 21)players. peak oxygen uptake (vo2max) was assessed duringcompletion of an incremental exercise test on a treadmill. speeddiscrimination stimuli were images of red square-shapes on agrey background presented moving along the sagittal axis at fourdifferent virtual velocities on a computer (pc) screen. repeatedmeasures manova revealed a significant main effect for thedecision-making time factor. a second manova revealed asignificant main effect for the decision-making accuracy factor.the soccer group made a significantly lower number of errorsthan the basketball group (p = 0.015) in pre- and post-fatiguedecision-making accuracy. the results showed that athletes’decision-making time decreased and decision-making errorsincreased after a maximal aerobic capacity exercise task. acomparison of the pre- and post-fatigue speed discriminationskills of experienced basketball, volleyball and soccer playersindicated that the only significant difference was for decisionmakingaccuracy between the soccer and basketball groups. thecurrent findings clearly demonstrated that the athletes madedecisions faster at the expense of accuracy when fatigued.