TY - JOUR
T1 - Exploring the Brain Activity Related to Missing Penalty Kicks
T2 - an fNIRS Study
AU - Slutter, Max
AU - Thammasan, Nattapong
AU - Poel, Mannes
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors gratefully acknowledge soccer clubs vv Drienerlo and vv Den Ham for their help and support in the experiment, especially Silvie van de Boogaard, Vincent Delke, Allyne Groen, Patrick van Oerle, and Harry Vaassen. The authors also thank Job van Regteren, Nicole Rohring at University of Twente (UT) Sports Center, faculty members and staffs at the Faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences, UT, and Liucija Svinkunaite at Artinis for materials and facilities supports in this study. The authors also thank Sandra van Essen at Dutch overarching sports organization for discussion in experimental design and Dirk Heylen at Human-Media Interaction group, UT for advice and discussion. Funding. This work was partially supported by the European Regional Development Fund's operationeel programma oost (OP-OOST EFRO PROJ-00900) and by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWA Startimpuls 400.17.602).
Funding Information:
This work was partially supported by the European Regional Development Fund’s operationeel programma oost (OP-OOST EFRO PROJ-00900) and by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWA Startimpuls 400.17.602).
Publisher Copyright:
© Copyright © 2021 Slutter, Thammasan and Poel.
PY - 2021/5/7
Y1 - 2021/5/7
N2 - At vital moments in professional soccer matches, penalties were often missed. Psychological factors, such as anxiety and pressure, are among the critical causes of the mistakes, commonly known as choking under pressure. Nevertheless, the factors have not been fully explored. In this study, we used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to investigate the influence of the brain on this process. An in-situ study was set-up (N=22), in which each participant took 15 penalties under three different pressure conditions: without a goalkeeper, with an amiable goalkeeper, and with a competitive goalkeeper. Both experienced and inexperienced soccer players were recruited, and the brain activation was compared across groups. Besides, fNIRS activation was compared between sessions that participants felt anxious against sessions without anxiety report, and between penalty-scoring and -missing sessions. The results show that the task-relevant brain region, the motor cortex, was more activated when players were not experiencing performance anxiety. The activation of task-irrelevant areas was shown to be related to players experiencing anxiety and missing penalties, especially the prefrontal cortex (PFC). More particularly, an overall higher activation of the PFC and an increase of PFC lateral asymmetry were related to anxious players and missed penalties, which can be caused by players' worries about the consequences of scoring or missing the penalty kicks. When experienced players were feeling anxious, their left temporal cortex activation increased, which could be an indication that experienced overthink the situation and neglect their automated skills. Besides, the left temporal cortex activation is higher when inexperienced players succeeded to score a penalty. Overall, the results of this study are in line with the neural efficiency theory and demonstrate the feasibility and ecological validity to detect neurological clues relevant to anxiety and performance from fNIRS recordings in the field.
AB - At vital moments in professional soccer matches, penalties were often missed. Psychological factors, such as anxiety and pressure, are among the critical causes of the mistakes, commonly known as choking under pressure. Nevertheless, the factors have not been fully explored. In this study, we used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to investigate the influence of the brain on this process. An in-situ study was set-up (N=22), in which each participant took 15 penalties under three different pressure conditions: without a goalkeeper, with an amiable goalkeeper, and with a competitive goalkeeper. Both experienced and inexperienced soccer players were recruited, and the brain activation was compared across groups. Besides, fNIRS activation was compared between sessions that participants felt anxious against sessions without anxiety report, and between penalty-scoring and -missing sessions. The results show that the task-relevant brain region, the motor cortex, was more activated when players were not experiencing performance anxiety. The activation of task-irrelevant areas was shown to be related to players experiencing anxiety and missing penalties, especially the prefrontal cortex (PFC). More particularly, an overall higher activation of the PFC and an increase of PFC lateral asymmetry were related to anxious players and missed penalties, which can be caused by players' worries about the consequences of scoring or missing the penalty kicks. When experienced players were feeling anxious, their left temporal cortex activation increased, which could be an indication that experienced overthink the situation and neglect their automated skills. Besides, the left temporal cortex activation is higher when inexperienced players succeeded to score a penalty. Overall, the results of this study are in line with the neural efficiency theory and demonstrate the feasibility and ecological validity to detect neurological clues relevant to anxiety and performance from fNIRS recordings in the field.
KW - UT-Hybrid-D
KW - Football
KW - Soccer
KW - Sports
KW - Penalty kick
KW - Choking
KW - Mental pressure
KW - Neural efficiency
KW - fNIRS
U2 - 10.3389/fcomp.2021.661466
DO - 10.3389/fcomp.2021.661466
M3 - Article
SN - 2095-2228
VL - 3
JO - Frontiers of Computer Science
JF - Frontiers of Computer Science
M1 - 661466
ER -