Professional Experience Moderates Behavioral Performance and Sensorimotor-Related Cortical Activity During Scoring Decision-Making in Aerobic Gymnastics Judges: An fNIRS Study

Understanding how professional experience shapes cognitive and neural resource allocation across different task demands is important for elucidating expert decision-making. This study examines whether professional experience influences behavioral performance and sensorimotor-related cortical activity across different scoring dimensions. To this end, we compared aerobic gymnastics judges with different levels of professional experience during execution score and difficulty score decision-making. Forty-nine judges were included, comprising 23 expert judges with FIG international judging qualifications and 26 less-experienced judges with Chinese national Level 1 qualifications. Participants viewed aerobic gymnastics action videos and completed execution score and difficulty score tasks while cortical hemodynamic activity was recorded using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Oxygenated hemoglobin (HbO) β values estimated using a general linear model were used as the index of task-related cortical activation. Expert judges showed higher scoring accuracy than less-experienced judges in both tasks, whereas no significant between-group differences were observed in reaction time. Under the current accuracy criteria, difficulty score decisions showed higher overall accuracy, whereas execution score decisions required longer reaction times. After channel-wise FDR correction, significant judge group × decision type interactions were observed in CH13 and CH19, primarily localized to the right precentral and postcentral gyri, respectively. Both channels exhibited crossover patterns during the video observation period: expert judges showed greater task-related activation under the execution score requirement, whereas less-experienced judges showed greater activation under the difficulty score requirement. Exploratory brain–behavior analyses further indicated a between-group difference in the association between CH19 activation and reaction time during the video observation period under the execution score condition. These findings suggest that experience-related differences in judging may involve task-dependent recruitment of sensorimotor resources during scoring-related action observation. Given the cross-sectional design and age differences between groups, these findings should be interpreted as experience-related associations rather than causal effects of long-term professional experience.