Fabrizio Sors

University of Trieste | UNITS · Department of Life Sciences

In ball sports, such as volleyball or soccer, the impact sound of the ball is used to define the shot length and predict the final ball position on the field. Several studies thoroughly investigated the role of sound intensity in predicting the ball’s landing point, neglecting the equally important contribution of the sound frequency spectrum compo...

Starting approximately from the beginning of the new millennium, a series of studies highlighted that auditory information deriving from biological motion can significantly influence the behavioral, cognitive and neurophysiological processes involved in the perception and execution of complex movements. In particular, it was observed that an approp...

This study aimed to investigate the effects of auditory stimulation with different frequency variations (increasing, decreasing, and constant) on performance, physiological parameters and perceived exertion in the shuttle run test. Twenty-four healthy sports science students participated in this experimental study and performed the shuttle run test...

Aims The present study aims to investigate the occurrence of the serial position effect in the recall of items verbally presented in three different contexts. Background The serial position effect has been studied with both verbal ( e.g ., words) and visuospatial ( e.g ., locations) stimuli but not with verbal-spatial stimuli ( i.e ., spatial desc...

The home advantage and the subconscious referee bias regularly occur in professional sports, particularly in association football. The matches played behind closed doors in spring and summer 2020 highlighted that the crowd support is one of the main factors contributing to both phenomena in domestic leagues. The aim of the present study was to inve...

The Spatial–TEmporal Association of Response Codes (STEARC) effect (Ishihara et al. in Cortex 44:454–461, 2008) is evidence that time is spatially coded along the horizontal axis. It consists in faster left-hand responses to early onset timing and faster right-hand responses to late onset timing. This effect has only been established using tasks th...

In 1993, Agostini and Proffitt showed that perceptual belongingness (the subsumption of some sets of elements into a perceived whole) causes simultaneous lightness contrast to be seen in configurations in which the inducing elements are not adjacent to the target. The aim of the present research was to measure the strength of belongingness in deter...

Background Due to the unfortunate pandemic situation, the phenomena of home advantage and referee bias in sports have recently received a particular research attention, especially in association football. In this regard, several studies were conducted on the last portion of the 2019–20 season: the majority of them suggests a reduction—but not the e...

In recent years, various intervention programs have been developed to enhance the quality of life of young athletes. This is particularly important for those who live in residences of professional clubs, far from their families. In this regard, we designed a positive psychology intervention program called “DÉPORVIDA”, aimed at enhancing character s...

Reverspectives are paintings created by the English artist Patrick Hughes. They are 3D structures, for example, pyramids or prisms, which elicit an illusory depth perception that corresponds to the reverse of the physical depth layout. Rogers and Gyani state that “the perspective information provided by a simple grid of vertical and horizontal line...

Recent studies explored the contribution of auditory information in ecological contexts to biological motion perception and its influence on movement execution. This work provides an overview of the most influential scientific contributions in this domain and analyzes the most recent findings, both in sport and motor rehabilitation. Overall, the li...

The reverse contrast is a perceptual phenomenon in which the effect of the classical simultaneous lightness contrast is reversed. In classic simultaneous lightness contrast configurations, a gray surrounded by black is perceived lighter than an identical gray surrounded by white, but in the reverse contrast configurations, the perceptual outcome is...

Home advantage and referee bias are two well-documented phenomena in professional sports, especially in association football. Among the various factors determining them, the crowd noise is considered as one of the most relevant; yet, the majority of previous studies could not isolate its contribution. The possibility to study the effects of crowd n...

University students are the most employed category of participants in cognitive research. However, researchers cannot fully control what their participants do the night before the experiments (e.g., consumption of alcohol) and, unless the experiment specifically concerns the effects of alcohol consumption, they often do not ask about it. Despite pr...

Despite the numerous benefits associated with sport practice, many children and adolescents end up quitting it year after year, with a stable dropout rate between 10 and 19 years of age. Among the causes of sport abandonment, the scientific literature highlights the presence of burnout as a fundamental factor. In this regard, the aim of the present...

People usually rely on sight to encode spatial information, becoming aware of other sensory cues when deprived of vision. In the absence of vision, it has been demonstrated that physical movements and spatial descriptions can effectively provide the spatial information that is necessary for the construction of an adequate spatial mental model. Howe...

The verbal descriptions of an environment elicit a spatial mental model, in which the linear disposition of the described objects might be related to the properties of the description. In particular the direction from which the environment is encoded might shape the spatial mental model, as a consequence of a cultural bias in reading and writing di...

The decision-making processes of referees in sports are affected by many factors, including the pressure of spectators. While the home/visitor bias has been previously investigated, the role of crowd noise has been less studied. In the present study, we investigated how the crowd noise (calm vs. pressing) influence the decisions of basketball refer...

In light of the growing body of research that is revealing the significant role of the auditory domain in sport, the present study aims to investigate the contribution of early auditory and visual information to the prediction of volleyball serves’ length. To this purpose, three within-subjects experiments were run, which differed among them in ter...

Background The use of rhythmic auditory stimulation (RAS) has been proven useful in the management of gait disturbances associated with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Typically, the RAS consists of metronome or music-based sounds (artificial RAS), while ecological footstep sounds (ecological RAS) have never been used for rehabilitation programs. Object...

Objective: The aim of the present study was to investigate how ecological sport sounds (i.e., foot-ball impacts of soccer penalty kicks) affect simple reaction times. Design: Three within-subjects, simple reaction time experiments were carried out; they differed among each other for the manipulations performed on the stimuli. Method: In Experiment...

Previous studies demonstrated that physical movement enhanced spatial updating in described environments. However, those movements were executed only after the encoding of the environment, minimally affecting the development of the spatial representation. Thus, we investigated whether and how participants could benefit from the execution of physica...

Objective: It is well-established that early visual information has an important role in human ability to play ball sports, as its correct interpretation promotes accurate predictions concerning the ball motion. Other research highlights that auditory information provides relevant cues in various sport situations. The present study combines these t...

Spatial updating allows people to keep track of the self-to-object relations during movement. Previous studies demonstrated that physical movement enhanced spatial updating in remote environments, but failed to find the same effect in described environments. However, these studies mainly considered rotation as a physical movement, without examining...

Movement rehabilitation by means of physical therapy represents an essential tool in the management of gait disturbances induced by Parkinson’s disease (PD). In this context, the use of rhythmic auditory stimulation (RAS) has been proven useful in improving several spatio-temporal parameters, but concerning its effect on gait patterns, scarce infor...

Contrast and assimilation are two opposite perceptual phenomena deriving from the relationships among perceptual elements in a visual field. In contrast, perceptual differences are enhanced; while, in assimilation, they are decreased. Indeed, if contrast or assimilation occurs depends on various factors. Interestingly, Gestalt scientists explained...

Our purposes were to investigate: (a) differences in mood states between high and low performers at the beginning and end of the Girobio 2012 cycling race, and in respect to both actual and perceived performance; and (b) whether the participants' mood states predicted actual and perceived performance. Profile of Mood States (POMS) of 72 elite cycli...

Previous research has demonstrated that auditory rhythms affect both movement and physiological functions. We hypothesized that the ecological sounds of human breathing can affect breathing more than artificial sounds of breathing, varying in tones for inspiration and expiration. To address this question, we monitored the breath duration of partici...

A growing body of research concerns the influence of auditory stimuli on motor action. The present review recalls the relevance of two theoretical frameworks (referring to the mirror neurons system and the Theory of Event Coding, respectively) for rehabilitation and sport. Then, it describes the laboratory studies showing the effectiveness of acous...

In common practice, sports-perceptual interventions are mainly based on vision. However, research demonstrates that sporting performance can also be improved through the use of sounds, showing the relevance of the auditory channel to convey sports-related information, which can positively affect athletes’ motor outcomes. This review examines the po...

Previous studies have demonstrated that physical therapy accompanied by Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation (RAS) can improve the motor skills of patients with Parkinson’s disease and, in particular, their gait disturbances. In the present work we describe the neurological bases and perceptual-motor deficits generally associated with Parkinson’s disease,...

The ability to detect the perceptual cues related to cardiac activity is an important aspect related to the onset and maintenance of some psychopathological disorders, such as panic disorder. We tested two groups – panic disorder (PD) patients and healthy participants – in order to examine the ability to estimate participants' own heart frequency....

Objective This study aims to test the effectiveness of a perceptual training concerning the anticipatory skills of soccer goalkeepers, by assessing their performances while engaged in predicting the direction of penalty kicks. Design Forty-two skilled goalkeepers were randomly assigned to three training groups: Experimental, placebo, and control....

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