Introduction
Existing research demonstrates that long-term and intensive training in sports, particularly among elite athletes, leads to not only an enhancement in athletic competencies but also an elevation in cognitive function ( Logan et al., 2022 ). These athletes manifest sophisticated multi-dimensional cognitive proficiencies, including aspects of perception, attention, memory, anticipation, and decision-making ( Mann et al., 2007 ; Furley & Memmert, 2011 ; Ericsson et al., 2018 ). Yet, numerous studies employing sport-specific tasks have revealed that, although athletes may demonstrate superior sport-related cognitive performance ( Jin et al., 2011 ; Wang & Tu, 2017 ), the effects on fundamental cognitive faculties remain non-significant ( Furley & Memmert, 2011 ; Ericsson et al., 2018 ). Importantly, scant research has delved into the extent to which cognitive expertise in sports is transferable to non-sport cognitive tasks, or whether such benefits encompass measures of cognition that align with underlying cognitive demands ( Voss et al., 2010 ). Recent neuroimaging investigations have provided evidence that sustained professional skill training among elite athletes may induce plasticity in both brain structure and function ( Zhang et al., 2021 ), shedding light on the neural mechanisms engendered by long-term sports training. Thus, the present study endeavors to explore the cognitive advantages accrued from prolonged training in elite athletes (high-skill performance), focusing on sport-specific domains, while examining the potential transference of these benefits to non-sport cognitive domains, and delineating the neural processes activated in response to information processing demands.

Athletes’ visuospatial ability and athletic performance are vital in the dynamic environment of racket sports. For instance, perception and object tracking, structuring complicated visual information, voluntary attention shifts, and visuomotor coordination and speed are all components of visuospatial cognition ( Possin, 2010 ; Spence & Feng, 2010 ). Racket athletes (table tennis, badminton) outperform nonathletes on fundamental visuospatial processing tests such as the attention network ( Wang, Guo & Zhou, 2016 ), a cued RT task ( Hung et al., 2004 ), a go/no-go visuospatial ( Guo, Li & Yu, 2017 ), and attention and working memory ( Wang et al., 2015 ). These results imply that long-term training in athletes under physical and cognitive loading may strengthen neural networks and plasticity, contributing to task-related information processing abilities (for review, see Nakata et al., 2010 ). The sport domain places strong demands on visuospatial processing in athletes ( Scharfen & Memmert, 2019 ; Yarrow, Brown & Krakauer, 2009 ), and analysis of visuospatial processes in athletes can reveal the cognitive adaptation behind exceptional athletic performance. While previous research has compared experts and novices ( Hung et al., 2004 ; Di Russo et al., 2006 ; Taddei et al., 2012 ; Wang, Guo & Zhou, 2016 ; Guo, Li & Yu, 2017 ), only a few studies have delved into the relationship between sports skill level (high/low) and cognitive processing performance. Furthermore, it is suggested that cognitive performance might be influenced by the level of skill expertise, such as distinguishing between high-performance and low-performance athletes. A meta-analysis by Scharfen & Memmert (2019) indicates that these differences present small to moderate effect sizes. Consequently, varying levels of expertise may influence cognitive performance outcomes. To elucidate this matter further, existing research has evidenced that a wider skill disparity between experts and novices correlates with the enhanced cognitive performance of the experts. However, the extent to which a narrowed skill gap between elite athletes and amateur competitors influences, or even maintains, the general visual cognitive processing advantage of elite athletes remains an area yet to be fully clarified. It is well-established that cognitive function benefits are prominent in the domain of sports, and these can contribute to optimizing sports training or identifying underlying talent potential.

Electrophysiological techniques, such as event-related potentials (ERP), provide the advantage of high temporal resolution for investigating the impact of athletic training on cognitive performance ( Thompson et al., 2008 ). ERPs can assess implicit cognitive processing for stimulus coding and response execution ( Luck, Woodman & Vogel, 2000 ). The P3 component of ERP has been utilized to study the hidden neuroelectric processing underlying cognitive performance in athletes and non-athletes. P3 amplitude is linked to updates in working memory concerning changes in mental representation ( Donchin & Coles, 1988 ; Polich & Kok, 1995 ) and the allocation of attentional resources towards stimuli that are behaviorally relevant ( Milne et al., 2013 ). On the other hand, P3 latency relates to the timing of stimulus classification ( Kutas, McCarthy & Donchin, 1977 ). Studies have demonstrated that athletes tend to have a larger P3 amplitude compared to nonathletes in tasks such as action anticipation ( Jin et al., 2011 ) and visuospatial memory ( Chueh et al., 2017 ). These findings imply that prolonged athletic training may effectively channel attention resources towards action memory representation and attention processing, leading to quicker responses. Recent research has investigated the connection between different levels of sport skill (high skill-low skill) and cognitive activities ( Huijgen et al., 2015 ; Lundgren et al., 2016 ; Verburgh et al., 2016 ). For instance, Vestberg et al. (2012) found that highly skilled soccer players outperformed less skilled soccer players in non-sports-related tasks (such as response inhibition, and cognitive flexibility). Similar studies have demonstrated that elite table tennis players have better cognitive performance than sub-elite table tennis players in inhibitory control tasks ( Elferink-Gemser et al., 2018 ). Cognitive performance is modulated by sport skill levels ( Lum, Enns & Pratt, 2002 ; Scharfen & Memmert, 2019 ), indicating that high skill athletes have better cognitive processing benefits and that basic cognitive functions can be improved through sports training. However, without measuring the underlying cortical mechanisms, these studies compare athletes with various skill levels. On the basis of these findings, we examined P3 amplitudes to determine whether elite athletic advantage in cognitive processing existed, in order to obtain insight into the potential brain mechanism behind the control process of elite athletes in visuospatial tasks.

The goal of this study was to evaluate the differences between skill level of sport (elite table tennis (ETT) players/amateur table tennis (ATT) players/nonathletes) on visuospatial attention and working memory task. We hypothesized that ETT may have superior visuospatial task performance ( i.e ., faster reaction times) than ATT, and that both athletes would perform better than nonathletes, as evidence suggests that through long-term sport training and extensive sport experience, a degree of cognitive function can be trained, which is beneficial for information processing performance ( Voss et al., 2010 ). In addition, high-skill athletes have superior visuospatial-related cognitive performance compared to low-skill athletes ( Scharfen & Memmert, 2019 ), and a greater component of P3 is associated with visuospatial cognition ( Müller & Knight, 2002 ; Chueh et al., 2017 ), we hypothesized that if ETT is found to have superior visuospatial processing performance than ATT, and ETT may have a greater P3 amplitude than ATT, and that both athletes exhibit greater P3 amplitude than nonathletes when performing visuospatial cognitive tasks. In addition, to further understand whether there is a correlation between sport training and task performance or sport training and P3 components.