This study investigated the relationships among neural activity related to pitch stimuli and task feedback, self-regulatory control, and task-performance measures in expert and novice baseball players. The participants had their event-related brain potentials recorded while they completed a computerized task assessing whether thrown pitches were balls or strikes and received feedback on the accuracy of their responses following each pitch. The results indicated that college players exhibited significantly larger medial frontal negativities to pitch stimuli, as well as smaller reward positivities and larger frontocentral positivities in response to negative feedback, compared with novices. Furthermore, significant relationships were present between college players’ neural activity related to both pitches and feedback and their task performance and self-regulatory behavior. These relationships were not present for novices. These findings suggest that players efficiently associate the information received in their feedback to their self-regulatory processing of the task and, ultimately, their task performance.

本研究调查了棒球专家和新手棒球运动员与投球刺激相关的神经活动与任务反馈、自我调节控制和任务绩效测量之间的关系。参与者在完成一项计算机化任务时记录了他们与事件相关的脑电势，该任务评估投掷的球是球还是击球，并在每次投球后收到有关他们反应准确性的反馈。结果表明，与新手相比，大学球员对投球刺激表现出明显更大的内侧额叶负面影响，以及更小的奖励积极性和更大的正面中央积极性以应对负面反馈。此外，大学球员与投球和反馈相关的神经活动与他们的任务表现和自我调节行为之间存在显着关系。这些关系对于新手来说是不存在的。这些发现表明，参与者有效地将他们反馈中收到的信息与他们对任务的自我调节处理以及最终的任务表现联系起来。