Effects Of State Anxiety And Spatial Working Memory Load On Visual Search Of Football Players

The visual search ability of athletes is very important,which reflects the visual information processing ability of athletes.In soccer games,players recall tactical positions in their minds and make decisions based on the visual information they receive while being distracted by anxiety.This study combined with the characteristics of football sports to explore the effects of state anxiety and spatial working memory load on visual search of football players of different levels.Study 1 explored the effects of state anxiety,spatial working memory load and sport grade on traditional visual search.35 college students majoring in sports training(football major)and 34 college students majoring in physical education(non-football major)were selected as the research objects.To explore the working memory capacity of expert group and novice group,a 2-level inter-subject design was adopted(expert group and novice group).For the traditional visual search task,a mixed experimental design of 2(sport grade: expert group,novice group)×2(anxiety: low state anxiety group,high state anxiety group)×2(spatial working memory load level: no load,load level 4)was adopted.The between-subject variables were sport grade and anxiety,and the within-subject variable was spatial working memory load level.The dependent variables were the response time and accuracy rate of traditional visual search task and the recall accuracy rate of spatial working memory load.The results showed that there was no significant difference in working memory capacity between expert group and novice group.Spatial working memory load prolonged the response time of traditional visual search task and decreased the accuracy.The effect of spatial working memory load on search response time was moderated by state anxiety,and the effect on the accuracy was moderated by anxiety.State anxiety only prolonged reaction time.Sport grade had no effect on traditional visual search tasks.Study 2 explored the effects of state anxiety,spatial working memory load and sports grade on visual search in real football scenes,and also explored whether state anxiety level will change under the influence of spatial working memory load.30 college students majoring in sports training(football major)and 30 college students majoring in physical education(non-football major)were selected as the research objects.The experiment adopted a mixed experimental design of 2(sport grade: expert group,novice group)×2(anxiety level: low state anxiety group,high state anxiety group)×3(spatial working memory load level: no load,load level 2,load level 4).The between-subject variables were sport grade and anxiety level,and the within-subject variable was spatial working memory load level.The dependent variables were response time,accuracy rate of real football scenes task,three-stage duration of visual search and number of fixations,and accuracy rate of spatial working memory load recall,state anxiety levels after each block.The results show that spatial working memory load and sport grade affected the visual search task in real football scene,and state anxiety only prolonged the response time in real football scene search task.The effect of spatial working memory load on search response time was moderated by sport grade.State anxiety prolonged the duration of the scanning phase and the confirmation phase.Spatial working memory load extended the duration of three stages of visual search and increased the number of fixation points.The duration of scanning phase and confirmation phase of expert group was longer than that of novice group,and the number of fixations was significantly less than that of novice group.The effect of sport grade on the number fixations was moderated by state anxiety and spatial working memory load.The anxiety level of the subjects in the high state anxiety group was affected by the spatial working memory load level.Conclusion:(1)State anxiety and spatial working memory load affect the performance of two kinds of visual search tasks;(2)The ability of the expert group to search in real football scenes was not transferred to the traditional visual search task;(3)The anxiety level of the high state anxiety group was affected by the spatial working memory load.