Accelerating Expertise with Part-Task Training of Macrocognitive Skills in the Baseball Workplace

Accelerating expert performance has frustrated many researchers and trainers in human factors, naturalistic decision-making, sport science, and expertise studies – with insufficient application of expert performance theories, findings and methods to the training macrocognitive aspects of human performance. Video-occlusion methods perfected by sports expertise researchers can have great utility, in some cases offering an effective and inexpensive alternative to high-fidelity simulation. The problem seems to be that expertise research done in laboratory and field settings doesn’t get adequately translated into workplace training. So, this article presents a framework for better linkage of expertise research/training across laboratory, field, and workplace settings. It uses a field-based case study to trace the development and implementation of a macrocognitive training program in the very challenging workplace of the baseball batters’ box. This training embedded for a full season in a college baseball team targets the perceptual-cognitive skill of pitch recognition that allows expert batters to circumvent limitations of human reaction time to hit 90 mile-per-hour sliders. While baseball batting has few analogous skills outside of sports, the operational principle of the training program has wider applicability and implications. Its core operational principle, supported by information processing models but challenged by ecological models, de-couples the perception-action link for targeted part-task training of the perception component, much in the same way that motor components are routinely isolated to leverage instructional efficiencies. After targeted training, perception and action are recoupled via transfer-appropriate tasks that have been inspired by in situ research tasks. In the case reported here, and potentially in many domains beyond sports, part-task perceptual-cognitive training improved macrocognitive skills and full-skill performance

Accelerating Expertise with Part-Task Training of Macrocognitive Skills in the Baseball Workplace

Accelerating expert performance has frustrated many researchers and trainers in human factors, naturalistic decision-making, sport science, and expertise studies – with insufficient application of expert performance theories, findings and methods to the training macrocognitive aspects of human performance. Video-occlusion methods perfected by sports expertise researchers can have great utility, in some cases offering an effective and inexpensive alternative to high-fidelity simulation. The problem seems to be that expertise research done in laboratory and field settings doesn’t get adequately translated into workplace training. So, this article presents a framework for better linkage of expertise research/training across laboratory, field, and workplace settings. It uses a field-based case study to trace the development and implementation of a macrocognitive training program in the very challenging workplace of the baseball batters’ box. This training embedded for a full season in a college baseball team targets the perceptual-cognitive skill of pitch recognition that allows expert batters to circumvent limitations of human reaction time to hit 90 mile-per-hour sliders. While baseball batting has few analogous skills outside of sports, the operational principle of the training program has wider applicability and implications. Its core operational principle, supported by information processing models but challenged by ecological models, de-couples the perception-action link for targeted part-task training of the perception component, much in the same way that motor components are routinely isolated to leverage instructional efficiencies. After targeted training, perception and action are recoupled via transfer-appropriate tasks that have been inspired by in situ research tasks. In the case reported here, and potentially in many domains beyond sports, part-task perceptual-cognitive training improved macrocognitive skills and full-skill performance

The scrum-down on brain damage effects of cumulative mild head injury in rugby: a comparison of group mean scores between national rugby players and non-contact sport controls

The present study comprises the second phase of a larger and ongoing research study investigating the brain damage effects of cumulative mild head injury in rugby. The purpose of this study was to determine whether cumulative mild head injury sustained in the game of rugby would cause brain injury as evidenced by impaired performance on sensitive neuropsychological tests. Participants were Springbok professional rugby players (n = 26), Under 21 rugby players (n = 19), and a non-contact sport control of national hockey players (n = 21). Comparisons of performance were carried out across a spectrum of neuropsychological tests for the three rugby groups (Total Rugby, Springbok Rugby, and Under 21 Rugby) versus the performance of the non-contact sport control group (Hockey Control), as well as comparisons of performance f9r the subgroups of Rugby Forwards versus Rugby Backs. Comparisons revealed a consistent pattern of poorer performance across all rugby groups relative to the performance of the controls on tests highly sensitive to the effects of diffuse brain damage. Within rugby group comparisons (Forwards versus Backs) showed significantly poorer performance for Total Rugby Forwards and Springbok Rugby Forwards relative to the performance of the respective Total Rugby Backs and Springbok Rugby Backs on sensitive, as well as on somewhat less sensitive, neuropsychological tests. The performance of Under 21 Rugby Forwards relative to Under 21 Rugby Backs demonstrated similar trends. Brain reserve capacity theory was used as a conceptual basis for discussing the implications of these findings

Sport and the social contract

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Mechanical behaviour of natural turf sports surfaces

The understanding of the mechanical behaviour of natural turf pitches is limited, owed in part to the deficiencies in current testing devices and methodologies. This research aimed to advance the understanding of surface mechanical behaviour through in-situ and laboratory experiments, and via the development of new testing devices. An impact testing device, the Dynamic Surface Tester (DST) was developed, with impacts replicating the magnitude of stress applied by athletes onto turfed surfaces during running. Developmental experiments indicated that the device was sensitive to changes in soil condition due to variations (P<0.05) in impact data. Cont/d

Weapons, warfare and skeleton injuries during the Iron Age in the Ancient Near East

Due to the nature of war, persons are killed with various types of weapons. Throughout the history of humanity, weapons were used in this regard and these weapons left injuries on the victims that are distinguishable. The type of force conveyed by the ancient weapons effected injuries that enable modern-day bioarchaeologists to extrapolate which weapons caused which injuries. The Assyrians depicted their wars and battles on reliefs. An analysis of these depictions, with an extrapolation of the lesions expected in skeletal remains, could contribute to better understanding of the strategies of war in ancient times. This dissertation will discuss how the evaluation of human remains in comparison to Assyrian reliefs may contribute to the chronological knowledge of war and warfare in the Iron Age Ancient Near East – especially at Lachish. A discourse of the approaches available to researchers regarding access to data in the forensic bioarchaeological field will be presented.Biblical and Ancient StudiesM.A. (Biblical Archaeology