Dual-task costs in speed tasks: a comparison between elite ice hockey, open-skill and closed-skill sports athletes

IntroductionIce hockey is a high pace sports game that requires players to integrate multiple skills. Players face perceptive, cognitive, and motor tasks concurrently; hence, players are regularly exposed to dual- or multi-task demands. Dual-tasking has been shown to lead to decreased performance in one or both performed tasks. The degree of performance reductions might be modulated by the exhaustion of cognitive resources. Literature on dual-task paradigms that combine sport-relevant elements is scarce. Therefore, a novel paradigm combining cyclical speed of the lower extremities and concurrent visuo-verbal speed reading was tested and validated. Additionally, to understand the nature of dual-task costs, the relationship between these costs and cognitive performance was assessed. We hypothesized occurrence of dual-task costs in all athletes without relationship to single task performance. Differences in dual-task cost were expected between open-skill and closed-skill sports, as well as differing expertise levels. Level of cognitive function was expected to explain some variance in dual-task cost.MethodsA total of 322 elite athletes (120 ice hockey, 165 other team sports, 37 closed-skill sports) participated in this study. Each athlete performed a tapping task, a visuo-verbal speed-reading task, and both tasks simultaneously. All ice hockey athletes performed additional cognitive tests assessing processing speed, spatial working memory, sustained attention, two choice reaction time, and motor inhibition.ResultsThe results of paired-sample t-tests confirmed significant dual-task costs for all sport groups (p