## 4 Discussion  
The main aim of the present study was to examine the involvement of different attentional processes in a simple VR Goalkeeper task, that of blocking fast-approaching balls. To do so, we asked participants to carry out two established psychological measures, each assessing different attentional processes and correlated their performance to that in the VR Goalkeeper task. We expected that the orienting network as assessed by the ANT would contribute to successful performance in the VR Goalkeeper task while we made no predictions about \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l c c c c c} \hline \hline  & \multicolumn{1}{c}{**Acceleration**} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{**Acceleration**} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{**Acceleration**} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{**Acceleration**} \\  & & **Overall** & **Target Present** & **Target Absent** & **Hits** & **Correct** \\ \hline Acceleration & Pearson’s r & — & & & \\ overall & \(p\)-value & — & & & \\ Acceleration & \(p\)-value & 0.995 *** & — & & \\ Target & Pearson’s r & 0.001 & — & & \\ Target & Pearson’s r & 0.962 *** & 0.931 *** & — & \\ Absent & \(p\)-value & \(<\)0.001 & \(<\)0.001 & — & \\ Acceleration & Pearson’s r & 0.988 *** & 0.994 *** & 0.924 *** & — \\ Hits & \(p\)-value & \(<\)0.001 & \(<\)0.001 & \(<\)0.001 & — \\ Acceleration & Pearson’s r & 0.954 *** & 0.923 *** & 0.995 *** & 0.911 *** & — \\ Rejections & & & & & \\ d’ & Pearson’s r & \(-\)0.001 & \(<\)0.001 & \(<\)0.001 & \(<\)0.001 & — \\  & Pearson’s r & \(-\)0.337 *** & \(-\)0.320 ** & \(-\)0.247 * & \(-\)0.321 ** & \(-\)0.372 *** \\  & \(p\)-value & \(<\)0.001 & 0.001 & 0.013 & 0.001 & \(<\)0.001 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular} Note. * \(p\) < 0.05, ** \(p\) < 0.01, *** \(p\) < 0.001.  
\end{table} 
Table 4: Correlations among measures of the VR Goalkeeper task. alerting and executive control/conflict. Indeed, the results supported our prediction about the orienting network. However, they showed that all three networks of attention contributed to accurate performance in the VR Goalkeeper task. This result is in line with the broader past research documenting the importance of cognitive skills in sports [42; 43; 44], and soccer in particular [1; 3; 45; 46], by showing here that responding to fast-approaching balls employs specific aspects of attention. Specifically, as our results show, to carry out the task efficiently participants needed to be alert throughout the task in order to detect as early as possible that the ball is shot, to spatially orient attention quickly towards the ball that was shot from a particular direction, and to decide quickly whether to initiate a move towards the ball or not while exerting cognitive inhibition, that is, while ignoring other distracting information. Moreover, the importance of inhibitory control (i.e., deciding quickly and correctly whether to respond or not) for this goalkeeping task was supported by the significant correlation in accuracy in the VR Goalkeeper task and the more traditional Go/No-Go task (Whack-a-Mole) that we used in the study and which is thought to measure the ability to inhibit a prepotent response. The contribution of the alerting network to the VR goalkeeping task we used is in line with the findings of [2], who showed that talented soccer players between 8 and 16 years of age outperformed age-matched controls in this measure. Our findings, taken together with those of [2], suggest that alerting might be a fundamental cognitive skill that may contribute to developing elite-level skills in soccer, at least for goalkeepers. Notably, however, the authors of [2] found no differences between the two groups of participants in orienting and conflict scores. Using the same task here (i.e., the ANT task), we found that orienting and executive control/conflict are significant predictors of performance in the VR goalkeeping task. It is, therefore, possible that these two networks of attention (i.e., orienting and executive control) are more relevant to goalkeeping tasks than the tasks carried out by soccer players at other positions.