Cross-sectional differences in inhibitory control between adolescent badminton trainees and age-matched non-athletes: a Flanker task study.

Résumé

BACKGROUND: Inhibitory control matures rapidly during early adolescence and supports academic achievement, emotion regulation, and social adjustment. Open-skill sports such as badminton, which combine aerobic demand, decision-making under perceptual uncertainty, and continuous response inhibition, are thought to confer greater cognitive benefits than closed-skill activities; direct behavioral evidence in amateur adolescent trainees aged 12-15 years nonetheless remains scarce.METHODS: In a between-group cross-sectional design, 32 adolescents (mean age 13.5 years; 1-3 years of amateur badminton training, ≥3 sessions/week) and 30 age-matched, non-exercising controls completed an arrow-version Flanker task; trainees also completed a training-history questionnaire. Reaction time, error rate, and the Flanker conflict effect were compared with independent-samples -tests, Cohen's , and Bayes factors, and corroborated by a mixed ANOVA, a trial-level mixed-effects model, and Inverse Efficiency Scores. Within the training group, Pearson correlations linked training years and weekly frequency to the four Flanker indices, with Benjamini-Hochberg correction across the eight tests.RESULTS: The training group responded faster than controls under both congruent ( = 0.54) and incongruent ( = 1.07) conditions and made fewer errors under the incongruent condition ( = 1.02). The RT conflict effect (training  = 56.7 ms; control  = 94.3 ms;  = 1.41) and the error-rate conflict effect ( = 0.91) were both substantially smaller in the training group. Within the training group, training years correlated negatively with the RT conflict effect ( = -0.62,