Robin C Jackson

• PhD Psychology (University of St Andrews)
• Reader in Sport Psychology at Loughborough University

Science funding is crucial to progress in modern society. Without funding it becomes extremely difficult for academics to conduct high-quality original research. While commercial support has financed seminal work in the sport and exercise sciences (Evenson et al., Citation2008), much of the research in this field is publicly funded through taxpayer...

Excessive alcohol consumption is associated with the development of attentional biases for alcohol-related cues and their prioritization in heavy drinkers. Recently, it has been hypothesized that holistic processing may also play a role in this prioritization, with higher alcohol consumers exhibiting stronger holistic perception for alcohol cues. H...

This study aimed to evaluate the utility and applicability of electrooculography (EOG) when studying ocular activity during complex motor behavior. Due to its lower spatial resolution relative to eye tracking (ET), it is unclear whether EOG can provide valid and accurate temporal measurements such as the duration of the Quiet Eye (QE), that is the...

Background: Risky alcohol use is related to a variety of cognitive impairments, including memory and visuo-perceptual difficulties. Remarkably, no prior work has assessed whether usage of alcohol can predict difficulties perceiving facial identity. Objectives: Therefore, this study aimed to investigate whether riskier alcohol consumption predicted...

Both kinematic and contextual information (e.g., action outcome probability) play a significant role in action anticipation. However, few researchers have examined the reciprocal influence of the two types of information and fewer still have investigated this issue for deceptive actions in sports. In the present study, we investigate the impact of...

The ability to respond quickly and accurately to spatial cues is of great importance to performance on any task where quick decision-making is required. The two main effects of spatial attention are priming, when a response to a target is facilitated after being cued at the same location, and inhibition of return (IOR), when the response to the tar...

Introduction The ability to perform optimally under pressure is critical across many occupations, including the military, first responders, and competitive sport. Despite recognition that such performance depends on a range of cognitive factors, how common these factors are across performance domains remains unclear. The current study sought to int...

Para sport classification aims to minimize the impact of impairments on the outcome of competition. The International Paralympic Committee requires classification systems to be evidence based and sport specific, yet the sport of goalball uses a structure that is not supported by evidence demonstrating its legitimacy for competition. This study aime...

High-skilled and recreational rugby players were placed in a semi-immersive CAREN Lab environment to examine susceptibility to, and detection of, deception. To achieve this, a broad window of seven occlusion times was used in which participants responded to life-size video clips of an opposing player ‘cutting’ left or right, with or without a decep...

The demands of training, competition stress, and impact of frequent (inter)national travel are assumed to contribute to the shorter night-time sleep durations and poor overall sleep quality reported for elite athletes (1–3). However, systematically exploring this assumption is challenging, since a robust evaluation of sleep quality and practices in...

Napping, episodes of short daytime sleep separated from the main sleep period, can compensate for the detrimental effects of inadequate night-time sleep or, as ‘siestas’, may form an integral part of personal sleep-wake schedules. Napping may also precipitate or perpetuate insomnia symptoms through the erosion of homeostatic sleep pressure at nig...

Introduction Napping, episodes of short daytime sleep separated from the main sleep period, can compensate for the detrimental effects of inadequate night-time sleep or, as ‘siestas’, may form an integral part of personal sleep-wake schedules. Napping may also precipitate or perpetuate insomnia symptoms through the erosion of homeostatic sleep pres...

Background Healthy young adults typically exhibit a progressive ‘top-down’ reorientation of body segments (i.e., head, trunk, then pelvis) during turning. This behaviour is less evident in older adults at risk of falling, who often reduce angular displacement between body segments during turns. The potential functional and psychological contributor...

Background: The purpose of the present study was to investigate how an athlete’s participation in either an individual or team sport is related to their attitude toward sport psychology consulting and their willingness to consult a sport psychology practitioner. Method: The Sport Psychology Attitudes-Revised form (SPA-R) (1) was completed by one...

Cricket umpires are required to make high-pressure, match-changing decisions based on multiple complex information sources under severe temporal constraints. The aim of this study was to examine the decision-making and perceptual-cognitive differences between expert and novice cricket umpires when judging leg before wicket (LBW) decisions. Twelve e...

Background: The purpose of the present study was to investigate how an athlete’s participation in either an individual or team sport is related to their attitude toward sport psychology consulting and their willingness to consult a sport psychology practitioner. Method: The Sport Psychology Attitudes-Revised form (SPA-R) was completed by one hundre...

Reflection-impulsivity is a dimension of cognitive or decision-making style. We conducted two quasi-experimental studies to examine reflection-impulsivity in athletes using an information sampling task. In Study 1 (n = 108; M age = 22.7 ± SD age = 1.42; 50% female), we used a cross-sectional design to compare performance across athletic expertise (...

An extended time window was used to examine susceptibility to, and detection of, deception in rugby union. High-and low-skilled rugby players judged the final running direction of an opponent "cutting" left or right, with or without a deceptive sidestep. Each trial was occluded at one of eight time points relative to the footfall after the initial...

Editorial paper on statistical power and precision

The benefits and costs of prior expectations that are (i.e., congruent) or are not in harmony (i.e., incongruent) with action outcomes appear to be balanced; however, researchers have yet to examine the influence on skilled detection of deception. In this study we investigated whether response bias resulting from probability information (a) is stro...

The aim of this study was to examine the origin and persistence of the relative age effect (RAE) in competitive youth football. To examine its origin, birthdates of 121 category one Premier League academy players recruited over 6 years were compared with 691 Under 8 (U8) players in one of the regional grassroots leagues from which academy players a...

Insomnia symptoms are prevalent in athletes (64%-70%), who describe non-restorative sleep, awakenings and daytime fatigue. Contributing factors include early morning training and night-time competition, and type of sport (individual vs team-sport; aesthetic vs non-aesthetic). The Cognitive Model of Insomnia details an impaired transition to sleep...

Introduction Insomnia symptoms are highly prevalent in athlete populations, with 64%-70% of athletes describing non-restorative sleep, frequent awakenings at night, daytime fatigue and sleepiness.3 4 8 9 11 12 14 Factors identified to contribute to poor sleep in athletes are intense schedule of training, competition and travelling, early morning tr...

esearchers who have used the temporal occlusion paradigm to study responses to deceptive actions have focused on the time window in which players resolve deception, improving from low to high response accuracy. Remarkably, the window of time during which players become deceived has yet to be examined. In the present study we address this by examini...

An online survey designed to evaluate the differences between elite athletes and non-competitive physically active controls in arousal, sleep and several other components.

Introduction: We investigated the influence of expertise on neural events involved in the observation and prediction of another person's actions, in a time-critical football scenario.

Researchers have suggested that expert performers wait longer before initiating movement responses so that they can obtain more information to inform their decisions (Brault, Bideau, Kulpa & Craig, 2012, PLoS ONE, 7(6): e37494). The aim of the present study is to establish how movement kinematics and kinetics relate to observed effects, response bi...

The ability to anticipate what will happen next is critical to performance in many sports as well as other professional domains. We review progress made in our scientific understanding of this topic since the seminal work conducted some 50 years ago. We highlight advances in methods and measures and identify the different perceptual-cognitive skill...

Objectives: To determine the option generation strategies used by expert and novice tennis players when anticipating an opponent's intentions using information that would normally be picked up sequentially prior to the opponent striking the ball. Design and method: Altogether, 12 expert and 14 novice tennis players completed an option generation ta...

The ability to differentiate genuine and deceptive actions was examined using a combination of spatial and temporal occlusion to examine sensitivity to lower body, upper body, and full body sources of visual information. High-skilled and low-skilled association football players judged whether a player genuinely intended to take the ball to the part...

While their EEG was recorded, skilled and novice footballers viewed temporally-occluded point-light video clips of opponents dribbling the ball towards the viewer then turning to the left or right, either without deception (50% of trials) or with a stepover action to feign moving in one direction before going in the other (50% of trials). Skilled f...

Objectives: This study sought to explore highly-skilled soccer players’ perceptions of how contextual factors influence their decision making during matches. Design: A qualitative design was used in which individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight professional male soccer players aged between 18 and 22 years. Method: An intervi...

In golf putting, ‘reading the green’ is a difficult task. A study of university golfers completing three-metre putts found they were significantly worse on severely-breaking (11% success) and moderately-breaking putts (41% success) than on flat putts (51% success) (Wilson & Pearcy, 2009). This chapter focusses on the perceptual-cognitive phase of p...

In dynamic, temporally constrained tasks, individuals often need to anticipate what will happen next prior to information becoming available within the environment. In such situations, the availability of contextual information can facilitate anticipation, often in conjunction with postural information. While many researchers have identified the sp...

An extensive body of research has consistently shown that high-skilled performers are able to anticipate the actions of their opponent(s) better than their less-skilled counterparts. A potential disadvantage of being highly attuned to early visual information is that it leaves performers vulnerable to deception (Jackson, Warren & Abernethy, 2006)....

An effective sidestep, feint, or step-over can create an opportunity to alter the outcome of competitive encounters. Although much research has been conducted on anticipation skill and the use of advance information, it is only recently that researchers have started to systematically examine expertise effects in perceiving deceptive motion. This sy...

This study sought to explore highly-skilled soccer players’ perceptions of how contextual factors influence their decision making during matches. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight professional male soccer players aged between 18 and 22 years. An interview schedule was designed to explore the perceived influence of a ra...

Skilled performers extract and process postural information from an opponent during anticipation more effectively than their less-skilled counterparts. In contrast, the role and importance of contextual information in anticipation has received only minimal attention. We evaluate the importance of contex- tual information in anticipation and examine...

Skilled performers extract and process postural information from an opponent during anticipation more effectively than their less-skilled counterparts. In contrast, the role and importance of contextual information in anticipation has received only minimal attention. We evaluate the importance of contextual information in anticipation and examine t...

We tested the assumptions of Attentional Control Theory (ACT) by examining the impact of anxiety on anticipation using a dynamic, time-constrained task. Moreover, we examined the involvement of high- and low-level cognitive processes in anticipation and how their importance may interact with anxiety. Skilled and less-skilled tennis players anticipa...

While the way in which expert performers extract and process kinematic cues from an opponent’s postural orientation is well documented, we investigate the cognitive processes involved in anticipation based on contextual information alone (i.e., in the absence of kinematic cues). Long-term working memory theory (Ericsson and Kintsch, 1995) states th...

The aims of this study were to investigate choking susceptibility in a perceptual judgment task and to examine the predictive validity of the Decision Specific Reinvestment Scale (DSRS). A computer-based, choice response time basketball passing task was performed under low and high pressure conditions. Complexity was manipulated by depicting 3-on-3...

The purpose of the experiments was to analyse the spatial cueing effects of the movements of soccer players executing normal and deceptive (step-over) turns with the ball. Stimuli comprised normal resolution or point-light video clips of soccer players dribbling a football towards the observer then turning right or left with the ball. Clips were cu...

The effect of priming on the speed and accuracy of skilled performance and on a probe-reaction time task designed to measure residual attentional capacity, was assessed. Twenty-four skilled soccer players completed a dribbling task under three prime conditions (fluency, skill-focus, and neutral) and a control condition. Results revealed changes in...

Expert soccer players are able to utilize their opponents' early body kinematics to predict the direction in which the opponent will move. We have previously demonstrated enhanced fMRI activation in experts in the motor components of an action observation network (AON) during sports anticipation tasks. Soccer players often need to prevent opponents...

Two field-based studies were conducted to test the predictive validity of the Reinvestment Scale, the Movement-Specific Reinvestment Scale and the Decision-Specific Reinvestment Scale. In Study 1, performance ratings were gathered for female university field hockey and netball players (N = 44) competing in low-pressure group games and high-pressure...

In their position paper, Mesagno and Hill (M&H) argue that there is a discrepancy between how the term 'choking' is used by the media and researchers and propose that the term should be reserved for more acute and significant declines in performance than tend to be studied by researchers. Specifically, they assert that researchers may have failed t...

The aim of this study was to examine the neural bases for perceptual-cognitive superiority in a soccer anticipation task using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Thirty-nine participants lay in an MRI scanner while performing a video-based task in which they predicted an oncoming opponent's movements. Video clips were occluded at four ti...

The comparative efficacy of different perceptual training approaches for the improvement of anticipation was examined using a goalkeeping task from European handball that required the rapid prediction of shot direction. Novice participants (N = 60) were assigned equally to four different training groups and two different control groups (a placebo g...

Badminton players of varying skill levels viewed normal and point-light video clips of opponents striking the shuttle towards the viewer; their task was to predict in which quadrant of the court the shuttle would land. In a whole-brain fMRI analysis we identified bilateral cortical networks sensitive to the anticipation task relative to control sti...

Items from the Reinvestment Scale were modified to create a decision-specific version of the scale. Principal components analysis of responses from 165 participants revealed one-, two-, three-, and four-factor solutions for the Decision-Specific Reinvestment Scale. Confirmatory factor analysis of responses from a second sample of 111 participants r...

The present study examined the effectiveness of a priming paradigm in alleviating skill failure under stress. The priming intervention took the form of a scrambled sentence task. Experiment 1: Thirty-four skilled field-hockey players performed a dribbling task in low- and high-pressure situations under single task, skill-focused, and priming condit...

Objective: The objective of the study was to examine the moderating effect of dispositional reinvestment upon 'choking' in motor and cognitive tasks. Method: Sixty-three university students (40 males, 23 females) completed low-complexity (peg-board) and high-complexity (golf putting) tests of motor skill, card sorting and working memory (modular ar...

We examined the effect of expertise on cortical activation during sports anticipation using functional MRI. In experiment 1, recreational players predicted badminton stroke direction and the pattern of active clusters was consistent with a proposed perception-of-action network. This pattern was not replicated in a stimulus-matched, action-unrelated...

We examined skilled tennis players' ability to perceive fine and coarse information by assessing their ability to predict serve direction under three levels of visual blur. A temporal occlusion design was used in which skilled players viewed serves struck by two players that were occluded at one of four points relative to ballracquet impact (-320ms...

The History and Scope of Cognitive Sport PsychologyEffects of Cognitive Factors on Sports PerformanceEffects of Sports Participation on CognitionSummary, Conclusions, and Future DirectionsReferences

Three experiments were undertaken to ascertain the extent to which expertise in natural anticipatory tasks is characterised by superior attunement to the biomechanical (kinematic) constraints of the movement pattern being observed. Twelve world-class and twelve non-expert badminton players were required to predict the depth of an opponent's stroke...

The authors examined 13 skilled, 13 recreational, and 11 novice players' awareness of the advance visual information that they used to judge tennis serve direction. Participants viewed video clips of serve actions under 5 conditions of spatial occlusion. The authors assessed participants' awareness by comparing the different groups' confidence asso...

The penalty kick generates a variety of strong emotions in soccer (Carroll, Ebrahim, Tilling, Macleod, & Smith, 2002), and places the goalkeeper at such a disadvantage that only approximately 18% of penalty kicks are saved (Kropp & Trapp, 1999). We asked whether a goalkeeper can, by standing marginally left or right of goal center, bias a penalty t...

Sporting performance makes special demands on perceptual skills, but the neural mechanisms underlying such performance are little understood. We address this issue, making use of fMRI to identify the brain areas activated in viewing and responding to video sequences of tennis players, filmed from the opponent's perspective. In a block-design, fMRI...

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...

The ability to detect deceptive movement was examined in skilled and novice rugby players. Participants (14 per group) attempted to predict direction change from video of expert and recreational rugby players changing direction with and without deceptive movement. Confidence associated with judgments was recorded on each trial to seek evidence rega...

Attentional processes governing skilled motor behavior were examined in two studies. In Experiment 1, fi eld hockey players performed a dribbling task under single-task, dual-task, and skill-focused conditions under both low and high pressure situations. In Experiment 2, skilled soccer players performed a dribbling task under single-task, skill-foc...

Two experiments were conducted to examine whether the conclusions drawn regarding the timing of anticipatory information pick-up from temporal occlusion studies are influenced by whether (a) the viewing period is of variable or fixed duration and (b) the task is a laboratory-based one with simple responses or a natural one requiring a coupled, inte...

The perceptual skills underlying anticipatory movement in sport have been the focus of much research over the past 20 years. Methods for training such skills have tended to emphasise explicit specification of discriminative cues and the rules linking changes in the perceptual field with required responses. Recently, researchers have begun to examin...

The efficacy of explicit and implicit learning paradigms was examined during the very early stages of learning the perceptual-motor anticipation task of predicting ball direction from temporally occluded footage of soccer penalty kicks. In addition, the effect of instructional condition on point-of-gaze during learning was examined. A significant i...

The present study examined the relationship between self-reported levels of self-consciousness and competition anxiety among a sample of sportspeople (N = 519). We hypothesized that self-consciousness would exhibit a positive linear relationship with competition anxiety via the mediator of social anxiety and that this relationship would be moderate...

This study examined the consistency of pre-performance routines in international rugby union goal kickers on kicks of varying difficulty and under different amounts of situational pressure. Concentration times and physical preparation times were calculated from video recordings of the 572 place kicks taken during the 1999 Rugby Union World Cup. In...

I present a re-analysis of the data from Farrow and Abernethy's (2002) study of implicit perceptual training in tennis. I argue that there are several weaknesses and mistakes in the original analysis, which, when rectified, lead to a fundamentally different set of conclusions to those given in the original paper. Specifically, there are significant...