Injury Risk Estimation Expertise Assessing the ACL Injury Risk Estimation Quiz

Background: Available methods for screening anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury risk are effective but limited in application as they generally rely on expensive and time-consuming biomechanical movement analysis. A potential efficient alternative to biomechanical screening is skilled movement analysis via visual inspection (ie, having experts estimate injury risk factors based on observations of athletes’ movements). Purpose: To develop a brief, valid psychometric assessment of ACL injury risk factor estimation skill: the ACL Injury Risk Estimation Quiz (ACL-IQ). Study Design: Cohort study (diagnosis); Level of evidence, 3. Methods: A total of 660 individuals participated in various stages of the study, including athletes, physicians, physical therapists, athletic trainers, exercise science researchers/students, and members of the general public in the United States. The ACL-IQ was fully computerized and made available online (www.ACL-IQ.org). Item sampling/reduction, reliability analysis, cross-validation, and convergent/discriminant validity analysis were conducted to optimize the efficiency and validity of the assessment. Results: Psychometric optimization techniques identified a short (mean time, 2 min 24 s), robust, 5-item assessment with high reliability (test-retest: r = 0.90) and consistent discriminability (average difference of exercise science professionals vs general population: Cohen d = 1.98). Exercise science professionals and general population individuals scored 74% and 53% correct, respectively. Convergent and discriminant validity was demonstrated. Scores on the ACL-IQ were most associated with ACL knowledge and various cue utilities and were least associated with domain-general spatial/decision-making ability, personality, or other demographic variables. Overall, 23% of the total sample (40% exercise science professionals; 6% general population) performed better than or equal to the ACL nomogram. Conclusion: This study presents the results of a systematic approach to assess individual differences in ACL injury risk factor estimation skill; the assessment approach is efficient (ie, it can be completed in\3 min) and psychometrically robust. The results provide evidence that some individuals have the ability to visually estimate ACL injury risk factors more accurately than other instrument-based ACL risk estimation methods (ie, ACL nomogram). The ACL-IQ provides the foundation for assessing the efficacy of observational ACL injury risk factor assessment (ie, does simple skilled visual inspection reduce ACL injuries?). It also provides a representative task environment that can be used to increase our understanding of the perceptual-cognitive mechanisms underlying observational movement analysis and to improve injury risk assessment performance

Qualitative perspectives on how Manchester United Football Club developed and sustained serial winning

Talent development in sport is well represented in scientific literature. Yet, the drive to protect ‘trade secrets’ often means that access to these high performing groups is rare, especially as these high level performances are being delivered. This leaves the details of high-end working practices absent from current academic commentary. As a result, clubs interested in developing excellent practice are left to build on personal initiative and insight and/or custom-and-practice, which is unlikely to yield successful outcomes. To address this shortfall the current study reports on prolonged engagement with a single high performing club, considering how their practice corresponds with existing sport talent development models. The paper ends by proposing an evidence-based, football-specific model for talent development, maintained high level performance and serial winning. This model emphasises four dominant features: culture, behavioral characteristics, practice engagement and the managing and guiding of performance ‘potential’. The study provides insights into the visceral reality of daily experiences across the life course of professional soccer, while advancing the evidence-base for understanding how Manchester United achieved their serial success

Capturing and testing perceptual-cognitive expertise: A comparison of stationary and movement response methods

Numerous methods have been used to study expertise and performance. In the present article, we compare the cognitive thought processes of skilled soccer players when responding to film-based simulations of defensive situations involving two different experimental conditions. Participants either remained stationary in a seated position (n = 10) or were allowed to move (n = 10) in response to life-size film sequences of 11 versus 11 open-play soccer situations viewed from a player’s perspective. Response accuracy and retrospective verbal reports of thinking were collected across the two task conditions. In the movement-based response group, participants generated a greater number of verbal report statements, including a higher proportion of evaluation, prediction, and action planning statements, than did participants in the stationary group. Findings suggest that the processing strategies employed during performance differ depending on the nature of the response required of participants. Implications for behavioral methods and experimental design are discussed

Considering the role of cognitive control in expert performance

© 2014, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. Dreyfus and Dreyfus’ (1986) influential phenomenological analysis of skill acquisition proposes that expert performance is guided by non-cognitive responses which are fast, effortless and apparently intuitive in nature. Although this model has been criticised (e.g., by Breivik Journal of Philosophy of Sport, 34, 116–134 2007, Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, 40, 85–106 2013; Eriksen 2010; Montero Inquiry:An interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 53, 105–122 2010; Montero and Evans 2011) for over-emphasising the role that intuition plays in facilitating skilled performance, it does recognise that on occasions (e.g., when performance goes awry for some reason) a form of ‘detached deliberative rationality’ may be used by experts to improve their performance. However, Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1986) see no role for calculative problem solving or deliberation (i.e., drawing on rules or mental representations) when performance is going well. In the current paper, we draw on empirical evidence, insights from athletes, and phenomenological description to argue that ‘continuous improvement’ (i.e., the phenomenon whereby certain skilled performers appear to be capable of increasing their proficiency even though they are already experts; Toner and Moran 2014) among experts is mediated by cognitive (or executive) control in three distinct sporting situations (i.e., in training, during pre-performance routines, and while engaged in on-line skill execution). We conclude by arguing that Sutton et al. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 42, 78–103 (2011) ‘applying intelligence to the reflexes’ (AIR) approach may help to elucidate the process by which expert performers achieve continuous improvement through analytical/mindful behaviour during training and competition

Types of problems elicited by verbal protocols for blind and sighted participants

Verbal protocols are often used in user-based studies of interactive technologies. This study investigated whether different types of problems are revealed by concurrent and retrospective verbal protocols (CVP and RVP) for blind and sighted participants. Eight blind and eight sighted participants undertook both CVP and RVP on four websites. Overall, interactivity problems were significantly more frequent in comparison to content or information architecture problems. In addition, RVP revealed significantly more interactivity problems than CVP for both user groups. Finally, blind participants encountered significantly more interactivity problems than sighted participants. The findings have implications for which protocol is appropriate, depending on the purpose of a particular study and the user groups involved

Second chances: Investigating athletes’ experiences of talent transfer

Talent transfer initiatives seek to transfer talented, mature individuals from one sport to another. Unfortunately talent transfer initiatives seem to lack an evidence-based direction and a rigorous exploration of the mechanisms underpinning the approach. The purpose of this exploratory study was to identify the factors which successfully transferring athletes cite as facilitative of talent transfer. In contrast to the anthropometric and performance variables that underpin current talent transfer initiatives, participants identified a range of psychobehavioral and environmental factors as key to successful transfer. We argue that further research into the mechanisms of talent transfer is needed in order to provide a strong evidence base for the methodologies employed in these initiatives

The Role of Physicians’ First Impressions in the Diagnosis of Possible Cancers without Alarm Symptoms

Background. First impressions are thought to exert a disproportionate influence on subsequent judgments; however, their role in medical diagnosis has not been systematically studied. We aimed to elicit and measure the association between first impressions and subsequent diagnoses in common presentations with subtle indications of cancer. Methods. Ninety UK family physicians conducted interactive simulated consultations online, while on the phone with a researcher. They saw 6 patient cases, 3 of which could be cancers. Each cancer case included 2 consultations, whereby each patient consulted again with nonimproving and some new symptoms. After reading an introduction (patient description and presenting problem), physicians could request more information, which the researcher displayed online. In 2 of the possible cancers, physicians thought aloud. Two raters coded independently the physicians’ first utterances (after reading the introduction but before requesting more information) as either acknowledging the possibility of cancer or not. We measured the association of these first impressions with the final diagnoses and management decisions. Results. The raters coded 297 verbalizations with high interrater agreement (Kappa = 0.89). When the possibility of cancer was initially verbalized, the odds of subsequently diagnosing it were on average 5 times higher (odds ratio 4.90 [95% CI 2.72 to 8.84], P &lt; 0.001), while the odds of appropriate referral doubled (OR 1.98 [1.10 to 3.57], P = 0.002). The number of cancer-related questions physicians asked mediated the relationship between first impressions and subsequent diagnosis, explaining 29% of the total effect. Conclusion. We measured a strong association between family physicians’ first diagnostic impressions and subsequent diagnoses and decisions. We suggest that interventions to influence and support the diagnostic process should target its early stage of hypothesis generation. </jats:p

The Illogicality of Stock-Brokers: Psychological Experiments on the Effects of Prior Knowledge and Belief Biases on Logical Reasoning in Stock Trading

BACKGROUND: Explanations for the current worldwide financial crisis are primarily provided by economists and politicians. However, in the present work we focus on the psychological-cognitive factors that most likely affect the thinking of people on the economic stage and thus might also have had an effect on the progression of the crises. One of these factors might be the effect of prior beliefs on reasoning and decision-making. So far, this question has been explored only to a limited extent. METHODS: We report two experiments on logical reasoning competences of nineteen stock-brokers with long-lasting vocational experiences at the stock market. The premises of reasoning problems concerned stock trading and the experiments varied whether or not their conclusions--a proposition which is reached after considering the premises--agreed with the brokers' prior beliefs. Half of the problems had a conclusion that was highly plausible for stock-brokers while the other half had a highly implausible conclusion. RESULTS: The data show a strong belief bias. Stock-brokers were strongly biased by their prior knowledge. Lowest performance was found for inferences in which the problems caused a conflict between logical validity and the experts' belief. In these cases, the stock-brokers tended to make logically invalid inferences rather than give up their existing beliefs. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings support the thesis that cognitive factors have an effect on the decision-making on the financial market. In the present study, stock-brokers were guided more by past experience and existing beliefs than by logical thinking and rational decision-making. They had difficulties to disengage themselves from vastly anchored thinking patterns. However, we believe, that it is wrong to accuse the brokers for their "malfunctions", because such hard-wired cognitive principles are difficult to suppress even if the person is aware of them