As individuals who have undergone long - term Tai Chi training, Tai Chi athletes may have adaptive changes in brain structure and function, which in turn endow them with unique advantages in cross - auditory - visual tasks. The philosophy of Tai Chi, which emphasizes the combination of internal and external training as well as the unity of mind and body, may assist athletes in maintaining better attention stability and enhancing information integration ability when dealing with complex audio - visual information. Recent research has found that Taichi athletes have superior performance in cross - modal tasks, but the reason is still unknown. This study added a pre - surprise test, surprise test, and post - surprise test to cross - modal rapid serial visual presentation tasks. The pre - surprise test required reporting of the two visual targets T1 and T2, while the surprise and post - surprise tests required additional reporting of auditory stimuli. Method: In our experiment, Taichi athletes and non - athletes were included. A significant interaction in accuracy difference patterns between the two groups under different Lag conditions (F (1, 38) = 6.89, p = 0.013, η ² = 0.15). Taichi athletes had higher accuracy in the visual target recognition (T2) task, especially under Lag8 conditions. The Taichi group's accuracy was significantly higher than the non - athlete control group (t (38) = 2.71, p = 0.010, Cohen's d = 0.85). Taichi athletes also exhibited lower attribute amnesia in these tests. In the surprise test, 10 (45.45%) of the Taichi group correctly reported compared to 5 (25%) of the non - athlete control group, with a chi - square test result of χ ² (1) = 3.84, p = 0.05. The post - surprise test showed a higher auditory information reporting rate in the Taichi group, but the difference was not significant. Conclusion: Taichi exercise may improve cross - modal tasks and attribute amnesia due to better processing of auditory stimuli.
Yang et al. (2026) studied this question.