Do Martial Artists Make Decisions Faster? A Study Comparing Martial Arts Practitioners to Non-Practitioners on a CRT Task.

Abstract: Split-second decision-making is of vital importance to many aspects of human existence, from life-and-death scenarios to sports. Studies have shown expert advantage in a given field on choice reaction time tasks within the area of expertise. Still, no conclusive studies on differences in this skill between athletes and non- athletes have been made on CRT tasks for general stimuli. The aim of this study was to establish if there are differences between martial arts practitioners and non- practitioners on a choice reaction time task to generic stimuli not related to expert knowledge. The results showed no significant advantage to martial artists regarding speed and an advantage to non-practitioners on accuracy. However, it was argued that the differences could either be a result of speed-accuracy trade-off or because of methodological fallacies in the study. Therefore, the study suggests that future research could achieve significantly different results by improving upon the methodology of this study.