Psychomotor speed is related to perceived performance in rowers

The goal of the present study was to determine if psychomotor speed is related to perceived performance. It was hypothesized that lower perceived performance was related to longer reaction times. A total of 85 measurements were taken in 26 varsity rowers (mean age 21.3 years, s=1.6) on five occasions over the course of the season. Perceived performance was measured with the "Reduced Sense of Accomplishment" scale of the Athlete Burnout Questionnaire. Reaction times were measured with the finger pre-cueing task and with the action and reaction modes of the determination test. The complex structured data were analysed with multi-level modelling. Random intercept linear models showed that perceived performance was not related to reaction times on the finger pre-cueing task. Perceived performance significantly predicted reaction times on the action and reaction modes of the determination test. In rowers who were not selected for the team after completing two measurement sessions, this relationship did not exist in the action mode; deselection was a moderator. Thus, a significant relationship between reaction times on the determination test and perceived performance was observed. It was concluded that the determination test could be a useful tool to monitor rowers' responses to training, although several issues should be resolved before it can be used in practice

Early Prediction of Physical Performance in Elite Soccer Matches—A Machine Learning Approach to Support Substitutions

Verschenen in het kader van het onderzoeksgebied: 'Monitoring and Predicting on Physical Performance in Daily Life and Sports

Predicting match outcome in professional Dutch football using tactical performance metrics computed from position tracking data

Quality as well as quantity of tracking data have rapidly increased over the recent years, and multiple leagues have programs for league-wide collection of tracking data. Tracking data enables in-depth performance analysis, especially with regard to tactics. This already resulted in the development of several Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) related to scoring opportunities, outplaying defenders, numerical balance and territorial advantage. Although some of these KPI’s have gained popularity in the analytics community, little research has been conducted to support the link with performance. Therefore, we aim to study the relationship between match outcome and tactical KPI’s derived from tracking data. Our dataset contains tracking data of all players and the ball, and match outcome, for 118 Dutch premier league matches. Using tracking data, we identified 72.989 passes. For every pass-reception window we computed KPI’s related to numerical superiority, outplayed defenders, territorial gains and scoring opportunities using position data. This individual data was then aggregated over a full match. We then split the dataset in a train and test set, and predicted match outcome using different combinations of features in a logistic regression model. KPI’s related to a combination of off-the-ball features seemed to be the best predictor of match outcome (accuracy of 64.0% and a log loss of 0.67), followed by KPI’s related to the creation of scoring opportunities (accuracy of 58% and a log loss of 0.69). This indicates that although most (commercially) available KPI’s are based on ball-events, the most important information seems to be in off-the-ball activity. We have demonstrated that tactical KPI’s computed from tracking data are relatively good predictors of match outcome. As off-the-ball activity seems to be the main predictor of match outcome, tracking data seems to provide much more insight than notational analysis

De Groninger Fitheidstest voor Ouderen. Ontwikkeling van een meetinstrument.

In deze dissertatie is de ontwikkeling beschreven van de Groninger Fitheidstest voor Ouderen (GFO). De GFO is een instrument voor het meten van motorische fitheid bij groepen zelfstandig wonende ouderen vanaf 55 jaar in praktijkomstandigheden, zoals een sporthal, gymzaal of buurthuis. De GFO kan worden toegepast in onderzoek naar de relaties tussen motorische fitheid en lichamelijke activiteit, gezondheid en het functioneren van ouderen in het dagelijks leven. Verder kan de GFO worden toegepast bij het ontwikkelen, evalueren en verbeteren van bewegingsprogramma's voor ouderen. Tenslotte kan de GFO een rol spelen in het stimuleren van lichamelijke activiteit van ouderen. Zie: Samenvatting

Touchscreen Pointing and Swiping:The Effect of Background Cues and Target Visibility

By assessing the precision of gestural interactions with touchscreen targets, the authors investigate how the type of gesture, target location, and scene visibility impact movement endpoints. Participants made visually and memory-guided pointing and swiping gestures with a stylus to targets located in a semicircle. Specific differences in aiming errors were identified between swiping and pointing. In particular, participants overshot the target more when swiping than when pointing and swiping endpoints showed a stronger bias toward the oblique than pointing gestures. As expected, the authors also found specific differences between conditions with and without delays. Overall, the authors observed an influence on movement execution from each of the three parameters studied and uncovered that the information used to guide movement appears to be gesture specific

Spatial shifts in swiping actions, the impact of "left" and "right" verbalizations

Movements are often modulated by the meaning of cue words. We explore the interaction between verbal and visual constraints during a movement by investigating if spoken words during movement execution bias late movement control of swiping actions on a tablet when vision of the target is removed during the movement. Verbalization trials required participants to vocalize the spatial directions 'LEFT', 'MIDDLE', or 'RIGHT' of the active target, relative to the other presented targets. A late influence of semantics emerged on movement execution in verbalized trials with action endpoints landing more in the direction of the spoken word than without verbalization. The emergence of the semantic effect as the movement progresses reflects the temporal unfolding of the visual and verbal constraints during the swiping action. Comparing our current results with a similar task using a variant verbalization, we also conclude that, larger semantic content effects are found with spatial direction than numerical magnitude verbalization