Effects of open-skill and closed-skill sports on the development of executive function: protocol for a prospective longitudinal cohort study in elite youth athletes

Executive functions develop throughout childhood and adolescence and are crucial to the success of elite athletes. While open-skill sports are thought to foster superior executive functioning due to greater cognitive demands, existing evidence remains inconsistent. Longitudinal research on elite youth athletes across sport types is limited. This study outlines a prospective 5-year cohort study involving approximately 200 elite youth athletes, participating in open-skill (water polo) or closed-skill (swimming) sports. Athletes will participate in annual assessments that integrate standardised cognitive tasks, including the Stroop task, Go/No-Go task and N-back task, alongside event-related potentials such as N200, P3 and N450, to evaluate executive functions at both behavioural and neurophysiological levels. Baseline demographic, cognitive and training-related data will also be collected. Mixed-effects linear models will be employed to analyse temporal changes, controlling for significant covariates including age, sex and training frequency to differentiate sport-type effects from maturational influences. This study will generate longitudinal evidence on how different sport types may influence the developmental trajectory of executive functions. By recruiting athletes training under similar environmental conditions, this protocol addresses confounding factors present in earlier studies. The findings will inform early sport specialisation strategies and support evidence-based elite youth athlete development models.