Long-term training induces neural plasticity in the visual cognitive processing cortex of table tennis athletes, who perform cognitive processing in a resource-conserving manner. However, further discussion is needed to determine whether the spatial processing advantage of table tennis players manifests in the early stage of sensory input or the late stage of processing. This study aims to explore the processing styles and neural activity characteristics of table tennis players during spatial cognitive processing. Spatial cognitive tasks were completed by 28 college students and 20 s-level table tennis players, and event-related potentials (ERP) data were recorded during the task. The behavioral results showed that the table tennis group performed better on the task than the college students group (control). The ERP results showed that the amplitude of the N1 component of the table tennis group was significantly lower than that of the control group. The amplitude of the P2 and P3 components of the table tennis group was higher than that of the control group. Table tennis players showed significant synergistic activity between electrodes in the β-band. The results of this study suggest that table tennis players significantly deploy attentional resources and cognitive control. Further, they employ stored motor experience to process spatial information in a hierarchical predictive coding manner.The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11571-024-10171-4.