Expertise differences in anticipatory judgements during a temporally and spatially occluded dynamic task

There is contradictory evidence surrounding the role of critical cues in the successful anticipation of penalty kick outcome. In the current study, skilled and less-skilled soccer goalkeepers were required to anticipate spatially (full body; hip region) and temporally (–160 ms, –80 ms before, foot–ball contact) occluded penalty kicks. The skilled group outperformed the less-skilled group in all conditions. Both groups performed better in the full body, compared to hip region condition. Later temporal occlusion conditions were associated with increased performance in the correct response and correct side analysis, but not for correct height. These data suggest that there is enough postural information from the hip region for skilled goalkeepers to make highly accurate predictions of penalty kick direction, however, other regions are needed in order to make predictions of height. These data demonstrate the evolution of cues over time and have implications for anticipation training

DOI: 10.1016/j.enggeo.2010.12.002 Performance of lime-treated silty soil under long-term hydraulic conditions

The durability of the mechanical improvements brought by lime once the involved earth structures are exposed to long-term hydraulic conditions (long-term water contact and water circulation) is still under discussion. This paper aims at assessing i) the impact of such hydraulic conditions on the mechanical shear strength of a lime-treated silty soil, and ii) the effect of initial conditions (lime content and compaction conditions) on the lime treatment durability. The results showed that water contact leads to a significant decrease in shear strength. The results also indicated that the mechanical performance of soils exposed to water circulation is highly related to the quantity of water passing through the soil specimens and hence to the permeability of the soils: the lower the permeability, the better the durability. Futhermore, it has been observed that a lime content higher than the lime modification optimum (LMO) enables a better homogeneity of the treatment, giving rise to a longer resistance to water circulation

Hitting a cricket ball: what components of the interceptive action are most linked to expertise?

Differences in interceptive skill between highly skilled and lesser skilled cricket batsmen were examined using a batting task that required participants to strike front-foot drive strokes from a machine-projected ball to a specified target. Task difficulty was manipulated by varying the width of the bat (normal, half, and third width) and target accuracy, and quality of bat–ball contact was monitored along with temporal and sequential elements of the hitting action. Analyses revealed that the highly skilled batsmen were distinguishable from less skilled counterparts by their higher accuracy under the normal and half-width bat conditions, significantly earlier initiation and completion of the front-foot stride, greater synchronization of the completion of the front-foot stride with the commencement of the downswing of the bat, and consistent timing of downswing relative to ball bounce and impact. In keeping with studies of other hitting sports, temporal and spatial coupling of the downswing to ball bounce to help minimize temporo-spatial error at the point of interception appeared critical to skilled performance. Implications for the understanding of interception and for coaching practice are briefly discussed