No spatial advantage in adolescent hockey players? Exploring measure specificity and masked effects

Ksenia Bartseva, Maxim Likhanov, Elina Tsigeman, Evgenia Alenina, Ivan Reznichenko, Elena Soldatova and Yulia Kovas

Intelligence, 2024, vol. 102, issue C

Abstract: The study examines how intensive hockey training is linked with spatial ability and academic performance. Participants were hockey players from top junior teams (N = 225, mean age = 14.25, all boys) and their unselected peers (N = 278, mean age = 15.47, all boys). Compared to the unselected group, hockey players showed lower results in 10 small-scale spatial tests (Cohen's d ranging from 0.42 to 1.04), Raven's Progressive Matrices (d = 0.41), and 12 school subjects (d for the sum of grades = 1.17). The differences in spatial ability remained significant after controlling for Raven's (d varying from 0.26 to 1.03). The absence of spatial advantage in athletes suggests that effects of sports on cognition are complex: spatial ability facet-specific, sport-specific, professional and intensity level-specific. Moreover, these effects might be confounded by differences in academic engagement, investment of effort and psychological and physiological effects of intensive sports engagement.

Keywords: Spatial ability; Spatial cognition; Ice hockey; Adolescent athletes; Academic achievement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289623000867
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:intell:v:102:y:2024:i:c:s0160289623000867

DOI: 10.1016/j.intell.2023.101805

Access Statistics for this article

Intelligence is currently edited by R.J. Haier

More articles in Intelligence from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().