Motor Experience Does Not Uniformly Shape Attentional Flexibility: Behavioral and Neural Evidence.

Abstract

Motor experience has been shown to enhance attentional flexibility in athletes, yet how behavioral performance and neural mechanisms develop across different levels of experience remains unclear. In the present study, attentional flexibility was examined in table tennis athletes with low, intermediate, and high levels of motor experience using a spatial stimulus-response task combined with electroencephalography (EEG). Behavioral results showed that increasing motor experience was associated with faster reaction times and higher accuracy, indicating a linear improvement in attentional flexibility. In contrast, neural measures revealed nonlinear modulation across experience levels. Specifically, amplitudes of the CNV and the N2 component exhibited experience-dependent nonlinear patterns, whereas mu rhythm activity showed no systematic association with motor experience. Together, these findings indicate that motor experience is associated with selective and nonuniform changes in behavioral performance and neural activity related to attentional flexibility, highlighting the importance of considering multiple neural indices and continuous experience levels when characterizing expertise-related cognitive development.