Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Player Skill Influences Simple and Spatially-cued Reaction Speeds Without Impacting Impulsivity

Super Smash Bros Ultimate (SSBU) is a prevalent but under-researched Esports title that requires efficient decision making to execute game-specific strategies. Purpose: To identify any potential differences in reaction time and impulsivity across different SSBU player skill levels. Methods: Twenty-four casual (CAS; 25±4y; 23M/1F) and 20 elite (ES 23±4y; all male) SSBU Esports athletes, as well as 21 non-gaming controls (NG; 23±5y; 3M/18F) volunteered for the present cross-sectional investigation, completing both a simple reaction time (SRT) test, Go/No-Go (GNG) assessment, and Posner Cueing Task (PCT) in-person using the PsyToolKit browser-based application. Best and mean SRT, GNG metrics (Go reaction speed and No-Go missed percentage [%missNG]), as well as PCT metrics (both valid [vPCT] and invalid [iPCT] cue reaction speed values, as well as the percentage invalid cues missed [%missPCT]) were analyzed using separate one-way (group [NG, CAS, ES]) ANOVA at a significance level of pResults: Analyses detected a significant effect for best (p=.003; p η² = .170) and mean (p>.001; p η² = .373) SRT. Specifically, ES outperformed both NG (p=.004) and CAS (p=.025) with respect to best SRT, without any significant differences between the latter two. Mean SRT scores similarly displayed that both ES (225±24ms; p.05). Conclusions: Although simple reaction speed appears to be Esports skill-specific, values associated with impulsivity and spatial cueing are less consistent. The latter nonetheless provides insight that SSBU players generally respond more quickly to visual cues than their non-gaming counterparts. These findings should therefore be contextualized across additional Esports titles, perhaps using game-specific assessment tools to more comprehensively evaluate skill differences.