Ritualized behavior in sport

Open Peer Commentary on main article "Why ritualized behavior? Precaution Systems and action parsing in developmental, pathological and cultural rituals"We consider evidence for ritualized behavior in the sporting domain, noting that such behavior appears commonplace both before a competitive encounter and as part of pre-performance routines. The specific times when ritualized behaviors are displayed support the supposition that they provide temporary relief from pre-competition anxiety and act as thought suppressors in the moments preceding skill execution. © 2007 Cambridge University Press.published_or_final_versio

Conscious monitoring and control (reinvestment) in surgical performance under pressure.

Research on intraoperative stressors has focused on external factors without considering individual differences in the ability to cope with stress. One individual difference that is implicated in adverse effects of stress on performance is "reinvestment," the propensity for conscious monitoring and control of movements. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of reinvestment on laparoscopic performance under time pressure

Was early man caught knapping during the cognitive (r)evolution?

Wynn describes a revolution in cognitive abilities some 500,000 years ago, which added new sophistication to the curiosity of early man – the ability to form hypotheses. This derivative of archaic curiosity is a fundamental feature of learning, and it is our contention that the naive hypothesis testing behavior of early man will have left a distinctive trail in the archaeological record.published_or_final_versio

Pedometer reactivity and rehearsal in children

Symposium 4: Physical activity and healthpublished_or_final_versio

EEG coherence between the verbal-analytical region (T3) and the motor-planning region (Fz) increases under stress in explicit motor learners but not implicit motor learners

This journal supplement contains abstracts of NASPSPA 2010Free Communications - Verbal and Poster: Motor Learning and Controlpublished_or_final_versionThe Annual Conference of the North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity (NASPSPA 2010), Tucson, AZ., 10-12 June 2010. In Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 2010, v. 32 suppl., p. S13

The development of a culturally appropriate analogy for implicit motor learning in a Chinese population

Learning a motor skill by analogy can benefit performers because the movement that is developed has characteristics of implicit motor learning: namely, movement robustness under pressure and secondary task distraction and limited accrual of explicit knowledge (Liao & Masters, 2001). At an applied level the advantages are lost, however, if the heuristic that underpins the analogy conveys abstractions that are inappropriate for the indigenous culture. The aim of the current experiment was to redevelop Masters's (2000) right-angled-triangle analogy to accommodate abstractions appropriate for Chinese learners. Novice Chinese participants learned to hit table tennis forehands with topspin using either a redeveloped, culturally appropriate analogy (analogy learning) or a set of 6 instructions relevant to hitting a topspin forehand in table tennis (explicit learning). Analogy learners accrued less explicit knowledge of the movements underlying their performance than explicit learners. In addition, a secondary task load disrupted the performance of explicit learners but not analogy learners. These findings indicate that a culturally relevant analogy can bring about implicit motor learning in a Chinese population. © 2007 Human Kinetics, Inc.published_or_final_versio

The influence of analogy learning on decision-making in table tennis: Evidence from behavioural data

Objectives: In sports it may be necessary for a performer to make a decision and execute a movement in close succession, or even concurrently. The manner in which a movement is controlled may impact on the degree to which the performer is able to combine decisions and movements effectively. Previous work has shown that if control of the movement has been acquired explicitly, with a high declarative knowledge content, dual-task conditions can be disruptive to performance of the movement. Previous work has also shown that, in contrast, if movement control is acquired by analogical instruction, with a low declarative knowledge content, motor performance is unaffected by dual-task conditions. It was, therefore, hypothesised that analogy learning will reduce the performance cost associated with processing motor responses while making high-complexity decisions. Methods: Participants learnt to hit a table tennis topspin forehand using either a single analogical instruction or a set of written instructions (explicit learning). Motor performance was assessed when decisions about the direction in which to hit the ball were either low in complexity or high in complexity. Results: Low-complexity decisions had no effect on motor performance in either condition. However, high-complexity decisions caused a relative performance deterioration in the Explicit condition, but not in the Analogy condition. Conclusions: These findings extend the implicit motor learning literature by highlighting the role of analogy learning in the complex interaction between decision-making and movement control in sport. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.postprin

Implicit motor learning and complex decision making in time-constrained environments

The cost-effectiveness of the implicit (procedural) knowledge that supports motor expertise enables surprisingly efficient performance when a decision and an action must occur in close temporal proximity. The authors argue that if novices learn the motor component of performance implicitly rather than explicitly, then they will also be efficient when they make a decision and execute an action in close temporal proximity. Participants (N = 35) learned a table tennis shot implicitly or explicitly. The authors assessed participants' motor performance and movement kinematics under conditions that required a concurrent low-complexity decision or a concurrent high-complexity decision about where to direct each shot. Performance was disrupted only for participants who learned explicitly when they made high-complexity decisions but not when they made low-complexity decisions. The authors conclude that implicit motor learning encourages cognitively efficient motor control more than does explicit motor learning, which allows performance to remain stable when time constraints call for a complex decision in tandem with a motor action. Copyright © 2008 Heldref Publications.published_or_final_versio

The possible benefits of reduced errors in the motor skills acquisition of children

An implicit approach to motor learning suggests that relatively complex movement skills may be better acquired in environments that constrain errors during the initial stages of practice. This current concept paper proposes that reducing the number of errors committed during motor learning leads to stable performance when attention demands are increased by concurrent cognitive tasks. While it appears that this approach to practice may be beneficial for motor learning, further studies are needed to both confirm this advantage and better understand the underlying mechanisms. An approach involving error minimization during early learning may have important applications in paediatric rehabilitation. © 2012 Capio et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.published_or_final_versio

Reduced influence of perceptual context in mild traumatic brain injury is not an illusion

Perceptual grouping is impaired following mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). This may affect visual size perception, a process influenced by perceptual grouping abilities. We conducted two experiments to evaluate visual size perception in people with self-reported history of mTBI, using two different size-contrast illusions: the Ebbinghaus Illusion (Experiment 1) and the Müller-Lyer illusion (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, individuals with mTBI and healthy controls were asked to compare the size of two target circles that were either the same size or different sizes. The target circles appeared by themselves (no-context condition), or were surrounded by smaller or larger circles (context condition). Similar levels of accuracy were evident between the groups in the no-context condition. However, size judgements by mTBI participants were more accurate in the context condition, suggesting that they processed the target circles separately from the surrounding circles. In Experiment 2, individuals with mTBI and healthy controls judged the length of parallel lines that appeared with arrowheads (context condition) or without arrowheads (no context condition). Consistent with Experiment 1, size judgements by mTBI participants were more accurate than size judgements by control participants in the context condition. These findings suggest that mTBI influences size perception by impairing perceptual grouping of visual stimuli in near proximity