Executive Functioning Differs Between Expert Sailors’ Responsibilities
Bibliographic record
Abstract
PURPOSE: Previous research suggest that competitive athletes have better cognitive functioning, i.e. sports-related executive functions (EF), compared to non-athletes. EF assist athletes in thinking before acting (Inhibitory control;IC), updating their thinking or planning (Updating;UP) and thinking outside the box (Cognitive flexibility;CF), and as a result make better decisions as well as plan and problem-solve efficiently. Therefore this novel descriptive observational study set out to explore the EF of expert sailors according to i) professional sailing ranking and ii) sailing role. METHODS: Fifteen national sailors (age: 24±8 years) with an average of 12±4 years of professional sailing experience volunteered. Primary outcome variables included IC, UP and CF. Sailing history information, global cognition (Montreal Cognitive Assessment; MoCA) and an EF test battery including the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), Trail Making Tests A and B, and Stroop task was randomly administered. Participants were assessed as a group and comparisons are made between top (TRS) and bottom ranking (BRS) sailors as well as between sailors’ positions i.e. crew or helm. RESULTS: Participants scored an average of 28±2 on the MoCA. TRS score 92% in global WCST score (p<0.05) and 127% better on Failure-To-Maintain-Set (WCST) compared to BRS (d=0.75; p=0.26). Crew demonstrated better CF (d=0.92-0.95; p>0.05) and IC (d=1.41; p=0.046), while helm had 30% better visuomotor speed and visual scanning (d=1.62; p=0.03). CONCLUSION: This is the first study to investigate the EF of sailors. These preliminary findings suggests that CF and IC may be important contributing cognitive skills for success in sailing. Also that less successful sailors may have inferior attentional capacity and therefore be more distractible; contributing to poorer decision-making skills. The responsibilities of sailors may contribute to the differences between helm and crew’s EF, or vice versa, i.e. helm needs to continuously be taking in visual cues and information whereas crew’s EF suggest that they anticipate the next event better, and as a result are able to actively adjust between strategies in ever-changing environments.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".