Anticipation is central to perceptual–cognitive expertise in badminton, but the decision mechanisms through which experts use visual and auditory cues remain unclear. This study examined expert–novice differences in unimodal anticipation and latent decision processes estimated by a hierarchical drift diffusion model (HDDM). Sixty-six participants (33 experts and 33 novices) completed a landing-region anticipation task under visual-only and auditory-only conditions. Behavioral performance was analyzed using mixed analyses of variance (ANOVAs), and accuracy and reaction time were jointly modeled with HDDM parameters: boundary separation (a), drift rate (v), non-decision time (t), and starting-point bias (z). Experts showed higher overall accuracy than novices, F(1, 64) = 56.46, p < 0.001, ηp² = 0.469, whereas reaction time did not differ significantly by group. The auditory-only condition produced higher accuracy, F(1, 64) = 12.69, p = 0.001, ηp² = 0.165, but longer reaction times, F(1, 64) = 150.32, p < 0.001, ηp² = 0.701. HDDM results showed higher drift rates in experts under both visual-only (BF10 = 1992.845) and auditory-only (BF10 = 24.354) conditions; auditory-only anticipation also involved higher boundary separation (BF10 = 53.095). These findings suggest that badminton expertise is associated with higher anticipatory accuracy and more efficient evidence accumulation under unimodal cue conditions, while auditory-only anticipation may also involve a more cautious decision threshold.

Multisensory integration is crucial for effective cognitive functioning, especially in complex tasks such as those requiring rapid audiovisual information processing. High-level martial arts routine athletes, trained in integrating visual and auditory cues for performance, may exhibit superior abilities in cross-audiovisual integration. This study aimed to explore whether these athletes demonstrate an expert advantage effect in audiovisual integration, particularly focusing on whether this advantage is due to enhanced automatic auditory processing. A total of 165 participants (81 male, 84 female) were included in three experiments. Experiment 1 (n = 63) used a cross-audiovisual Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) paradigm to compare the martial arts routine athlete group (n = 31) with a control group (n = 33) in tasks requiring target stimulus identification under audiovisual congruent and incongruent conditions. Experiment 2 (n = 52) manipulated the synchronicity of auditory stimuli to differentiate between audiovisual integration and auditory alerting effects. Experiment 3 (n = 50) combined surprise and post-surprise tests to investigate the role of automatic auditory processing in this expert advantage. Experiment 1 revealed that martial arts routine athletes outperformed the control group, especially in semantically incongruent conditions, with significantly higher accuracy at both lag3 (p < 0.001, 95% CI = [0.165, 0.275]) and lag8 (p < 0.001, 95% CI = [0.242, 0.435]). Experiment 2 found no significant difference between groups in response to the manipulation of auditory stimulus synchronicity, ruling out an alerting effect. In Experiment 3, martial arts routine athletes demonstrated better performance in reporting unexpected auditory stimuli during the surprise test, indicating enhanced automatic processing capacity. Additionally, a significant improvement in working memory re-selection was observed in the martial arts routine group. The expert advantage effect observed in martial arts routine athletes is attributable to enhanced cross-audiovisual integration, independent of an auditory alerting mechanism. Long-term training improves the efficiency of working memory re-selection and the ability to inhibit conflicting information, suggesting that the expanded capacity for automatic auditory processing underpins their multisensory integration advantage.