Funções executivas e idade relativa em atletas de futebol de elite de 13 a 17 anos

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relation between Relative Age Effect (RAE) and maturation with Executive Functions (EF). Color Word Interference Test 3 (CWI3), Trail Making Test (b) (TMT(b)), and the Design Fluency Test (b) were used as EF measures. Date of birth, height, and seated height were obtained, and maturity was estimated with a validated formula. Relative age was based on birth quartile for the competitive year. Participants were 85 athletes from three elite soccer club academies selected by convenience in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. We invited four main elite soccer clubs in Rio de Janeiro, but only three clubs answered by the time this study started being written. They were all from U13, U14, U15 and U16 teams of the club cited above. Athletes that were not part of the main group of the club for his age were excluded. Data collection occurred within the academies during 2016 and 2017 seasons. All athletes and parents agreed to participate in this study. Data normality of all numerical variables was confirmed by Shapiro-Wilk. X² test was performed to check for RAE considering an equal distribution through all months. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to compare each group and Post Hoc Tukey test was performed for variables that presented difference. Pearson s correlation coefficient was used with all variables and r values of 0.1, 0.3 and 0.5 were considered to represent small, medium and large effect sizes (De Raadt, Warrens, Bosker; Kiers, 2019). Effect Sizes were calculated by eta squared in ANOVA. Effect size values of 0.01, 0.06 and 0.14 were considered as small, medium and large differences, respectively (Olejnik; Algina, 2003). Significance level in all analyses was set at 0.05. Statistical analyses were performed using the software SPSS version 22.0 (SPSSTM Inc., Chicago, IL, USA). G*Power 3.1.9.2 (Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Lang, A.; Buchner, 2007) was used to calculate effect sizes and statistical power of all findings. The RAE was seen in all teams, except U14, with little difference in between. Maturity was correlated with relative age, causing significant maturation differences in U13 and U14 between quartiles of relative ages. The EF tests were correlated with different maturation measures only on athletes born in the first semester. Specifically, MO levels were correlated with CWI3 and TMT(b) and DFT. When comparing EF tests between different groups by relative age, younger semester groups showed better results for DFT in U15. the results of the present study show that relative age can cause maturation differences between relatively younger and older players of different ages. These differences can cause a delay in EF development in younger players favoring the relatively older. The results of this study highlight the importance of applying strategies that may favor the development of later-born players at the same level as others