Long-term working memory and vagally-mediated heart rate variability in pattern recall: A study on adolescent and adult female soccer players

Pattern recall performance is associated with basic cognitive skills such as working memory (WM) that temporally stores information. The performance may also associate with expertise knowledge that utilizes long-term working memory (LTWM) to retrieve information in long-term memory. However, the role of WM and LTWM in pattern recall tasks are still not clarified. Also, the role of WM and LTWM in task demand and developmental differences of players remain unclear. Further, memory retrieval is associate with vagally-mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV) level. Thus, we examined the effect of WM and LTWM in pattern recall tasks by participants setting two phases separately represent WM and LTWM abilities. We situated varied task demand by situation complexities, taken investigation on the developmental difference by recruited adolescent (U15) and adult (U23) female soccer players. vmHRV was measured during all tasks. The results show the adult group performed better than adolescents in the radial error (RE) of LTWM phase. Moreover, RE of WM phase was predicted by age in low and medium complexity. RE of LTWM phase was predicted by soccer experience in all situation complexities and predicted by vmHRV in medium and high situation complexities. The results indicate that the LTWM phase of pattern recall has a stronger association with soccer experience and validity in distinguishing age groups than the WM phase. Additionally, vmHRV can serve as a score predictor in the LTWM phase, specifically in complex conditions, and plays an important role in pattern recall evaluation among female soccer players.