Florentino Huertas is Lecturer in Football, Sport Conditioning and Strenght, New Technologies Applied to Physical Education & Sport at Faculty of Physical Education & Sport Sciences. Research is related to the modulation of attention (alertness, spatial orienting and executive control) by variables involved in physical activity and exercise (physical or psychological fatigue, type of practice- open vs. closed sports-, stimulants, acute vs. habitual effects of exercise on cognition,...)
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
The need to achieve short-term competitive outcomes in sports may influence the emergence of tale... more The need to achieve short-term competitive outcomes in sports may influence the emergence of talent selection strategies, which could bias individuals’ opportunities. The present study aimed to further explore the relative age effect (RAE), a phenomenon that strongly influences youth sport development. The RAE refers to a disproportionately high percentage in sport teams of athletes born early in the selection year. Our primary focus was to explore whether the RAE is supported by behavioral evidence in favor of better fitness—and especially cognitive-attentional functioning—of early as compared to late-born players. A cross-sectional study was conducted on 105 young athletes (u10, n = 52; 9.8 ± 0.3 years old, and u12, n = 53; 11.8 ± 0.2 years old) attending two youth elite soccer academies. Attentional functioning, anthropometrics, physical fitness, and game intelligence were compared across two Age Groups (u10 vs. u12) and four Birth Quarters (BQ1–BQ4). The RAE was statistically si...
In the last years, a substantial body of work has depicted a positive association between regular... more In the last years, a substantial body of work has depicted a positive association between regular practice of physical exercise and cognition. Despite the progress on this topic, the key factors driving that link are still a matter of scientific debate. Here, we aimed to further contribute to that body of work by pooling the data from seven studies (N=361) to examine whether VO2 (index of cardiovascular fitness), type of sport expertise (externally-paced and self-paced vs. sedentary), or both (controlling for sex, age and the method of VO2 estimation), are crucial factors to explain the association between the regular practice of exercise and vigilance capacity (measured by means of reaction time -RT- in the Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT)). The results showed that sport expertise was significantly related to RT, with only externally-paced sport differing from the sedentary condition (and also from the self-paced sport condition). Both the multilevel linear mixed-effects modelling ...
We compared coincidence-anticipation performance in normal vision and stroboscopic vision as a fu... more We compared coincidence-anticipation performance in normal vision and stroboscopic vision as a function of time-on-task. Participants estimated the arrival time of a real object that moved with constant acceleration (-0.7, 0, +0.7 m/s2) in a pseudo-randomised order across 4 blocks of 30 trials in both vision conditions, received in a counter-balanced order. Participants (n = 20) became more errorful (accuracy and variability) in the normal vision condition as a function of time-on-task, whereas performance was maintained in the stroboscopic vision condition. We interpret these data as showing that participants failed to maintain coincidence-anticipation performance in the normal vision condition due to monotony and attentional underload. In contrast, the stroboscopic vision condition placed a greater demand on visual-spatial memory for motion extrapolation, and thus participants did not experience the typical vigilance decrement in performance. While short-term adaptation effects fr...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
The need to achieve short-term competitive outcomes in sports may influence the emergence of tale... more The need to achieve short-term competitive outcomes in sports may influence the emergence of talent selection strategies, which could bias individuals’ opportunities. The present study aimed to further explore the relative age effect (RAE), a phenomenon that strongly influences youth sport development. The RAE refers to a disproportionately high percentage in sport teams of athletes born early in the selection year. Our primary focus was to explore whether the RAE is supported by behavioral evidence in favor of better fitness—and especially cognitive-attentional functioning—of early as compared to late-born players. A cross-sectional study was conducted on 105 young athletes (u10, n = 52; 9.8 ± 0.3 years old, and u12, n = 53; 11.8 ± 0.2 years old) attending two youth elite soccer academies. Attentional functioning, anthropometrics, physical fitness, and game intelligence were compared across two Age Groups (u10 vs. u12) and four Birth Quarters (BQ1–BQ4). The RAE was statistically si...
In the last years, a substantial body of work has depicted a positive association between regular... more In the last years, a substantial body of work has depicted a positive association between regular practice of physical exercise and cognition. Despite the progress on this topic, the key factors driving that link are still a matter of scientific debate. Here, we aimed to further contribute to that body of work by pooling the data from seven studies (N=361) to examine whether VO2 (index of cardiovascular fitness), type of sport expertise (externally-paced and self-paced vs. sedentary), or both (controlling for sex, age and the method of VO2 estimation), are crucial factors to explain the association between the regular practice of exercise and vigilance capacity (measured by means of reaction time -RT- in the Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT)). The results showed that sport expertise was significantly related to RT, with only externally-paced sport differing from the sedentary condition (and also from the self-paced sport condition). Both the multilevel linear mixed-effects modelling ...
We compared coincidence-anticipation performance in normal vision and stroboscopic vision as a fu... more We compared coincidence-anticipation performance in normal vision and stroboscopic vision as a function of time-on-task. Participants estimated the arrival time of a real object that moved with constant acceleration (-0.7, 0, +0.7 m/s2) in a pseudo-randomised order across 4 blocks of 30 trials in both vision conditions, received in a counter-balanced order. Participants (n = 20) became more errorful (accuracy and variability) in the normal vision condition as a function of time-on-task, whereas performance was maintained in the stroboscopic vision condition. We interpret these data as showing that participants failed to maintain coincidence-anticipation performance in the normal vision condition due to monotony and attentional underload. In contrast, the stroboscopic vision condition placed a greater demand on visual-spatial memory for motion extrapolation, and thus participants did not experience the typical vigilance decrement in performance. While short-term adaptation effects fr...
Uploads