RT Journal Article
T1 Differences Between High vs. Low Performance Chess Players in Heart Rate Variability During Chess Problems
A1 Fuentes García, Juan P.
A1 Villafaina, Santos
A1 Collado Mateo, Daniel
A1 Vega, Ricardo de la
A1 Olivares Sánchez-Toledo, Pedro Rufino
A1 Clemente Suárez, Vicente Javier
AB Background: Heart rate variability (HRV) has been considered as a measure ofheart-brain interaction and autonomic modulation, and it is modified by cognitiveand attentional tasks. In cognitive tasks, HRV was reduced in participants whoachieved worse results. This could indicate the possibility of HRV predicting cognitiveperformance, but this association is still unclear in a high cognitive load sport suchas chess.Objective: To analyze modifications on HRV and subjective perception of stress,difficulty and complexity in different chess problem tasks.Design: HRV was assessed at baseline. During the chess problems, HRV was alsomonitored, and immediately after chess problems the subjective stress, difficulty andcomplexity were also registered.Methods: A total of 16 male chess players, age: 35.19 (13.44) and ELO: 1927.69(167.78) were analyzed while six chess problem solving tasks with different level ofdifficulty were conducted (two low level, two medium level and two high level chessproblems). Participants were classified according to their results into two groups: highperformance or low performance.Results: Friedman test showed a significant effect of tasks in HRV indexes andperceived difficulty, stress and complexity in both high and low performance groups.A decrease in HRV was observed in both groups when chess problems difficultyincreased. In addition, HRV was significantly higher in the high performance group thanin the low performance group during chess problems.Conclusion: An increase in autonomic modulation was observed to meet the cognitivedemands of the problems, being higher while the difficulty of the tasks increased. NonlinearHRV indexes seem to be more reactive to tasks difficulty, being an interesting anduseful tool in chess training.
PB Frontiers Media
SN 1664-1078
YR 2019
FD 2019-02
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10272/16466
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10272/16466
LA eng
NO Fuentes García, J. P., Villafaina, S., Collado Mateo, D., de la Vega, R., Olivares, P. R.,  Clemente Suárez, V. J. (2019). Differences Between High vs. Low Performance Chess Players in Heart Rate Variability During Chess Problems. Frontiers in Psychology, 10. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00409
NO DC-M was supported by a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport (FPU14/01283). SV was supported by a grant from the regional department of economy and infrastructure of the Government of Extremadura and European Social Fund (PD16008). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Huelva
RD 31 may 2026