Sicong Liu

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Verified

Sicong verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• PhD
• Professor (Full) at South China Normal University

A growing body of evidence demonstrates visual, perceptual, and oculomotor abilities contribute to batting performance in baseball and there is interest in whether training such abilities can transfer positively to batting performance. The current study tested this question through a pre-registered randomized, and placebo-controlled intervention, c...

Unwanted intrusive thoughts (UITs) are negative ruminations that occur commonly and show similar characteristics between clinical and nonclinical forms. Despite their prevalence and impact, the control processes of UITs remain unclear. This study aimed to capture the effects of three thought-control strategies on UITs through an interventional desi...

Although health-promotion interventions that recommend changes across multiple behavioral domains are a newer alternative to single-behavior interventions, their general efficacy and their mechanisms of change have not been fully ascertained. This comprehensive meta-analysis (6,878 effect sizes from 803 independent samples from 364 research reports...

Although immunization can dramatically curb the mortality and morbidity associated with vaccine-preventable diseases, vaccination uptake remains suboptimal in many areas of the world. Here, in this meta-analysis, we analysed the results from 88 eligible randomized controlled trials testing interventions to increase vaccination uptake with 1,628,768...

Coincidence anticipation (CA) refers to the ability to coordinate responses to the arrival of a moving object. This study investigates the neurobehavioral processes that underlie CA through the measurement of electroencephalography (EEG) recorded during a CA task on a 17-foot plastic rail with evenly spaced LED lights. Participants responded at the...

Objective: Disadvantaged populations, including inhabitants of developing countries as well as racial/ethnic and sexual minorities in the United States, are disproportionally burdened by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, delayed HIV diagnosis, and unfavorable HIV-treatment outcomes. HIV interventions targeting single behaviors (e.g., te...

Baseball is an international sport with participation from tens of thousands of people worldwide. In the United States, the Prospect Development Pipeline (PDP) is a collaborative effort between Major League Baseball and USA Baseball to establish a developmental pipeline leading to the professional draft. Players participating in the PDP undergo com...

To survive and prosper, researchers must demonstrate a successful record of publications in journals well-regarded by their fields. This chapter discusses how to successfully publish research in journals in the social and behavioral sciences and is organized into four sections. The first section highlights important factors that are routinely invol...

The last decades have seen a rise in the use of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) approaches to modulate brain activity and associated behavior. Concurrently, eye tracking (ET) technology has improved to allow more precise quantitative measurement of gaze behavior, offering a window into the mechanisms of vision and cognition. When com...

Have you ever been frustrated when you miss a shot in basketball, or when your drawing comes out differently on paper than you pictured in your head? Would not it be nice if there was a way that we could speed up learning, to help our brains and hands work together better? People who are training to be surgeons feel the same way. Before they get go...

The fusion of immersive virtual reality, kinematic movement tracking, and EEG offers a powerful test bed for naturalistic neuroscience research. Here, we combined these elements to investigate the neuro-behavioral mechanisms underlying precision visual–motor control as 20 participants completed a three-visit, visual–motor, coincidence-anticipation...

Expertise in laparoscopic surgery is realized through both manual dexterity and efficient eye movement patterns, creating opportunities to use gaze information in the educational process. To better understand how expert gaze behaviors are acquired through deliberate practice of technical skills, three surgeons were assessed and five novices were tr...

Despite the widespread use of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in research and clinical care, the dose–response relations and neurophysiological correlates of modulatory effects remain relatively unexplored. To fill this gap, we studied modulation of visual processing as a function of TMS parameters. Our approach combined electroencephalogra...

Background Experts consistently exhibit more efficient gaze behaviors than non-experts during motor tasks. In surgery, experts have been shown to gaze more at surgical targets than surgical tools during simple simulations and when watching surgical recordings, suggesting a proactive control strategy with greater use of feedforward visual sampling....

The published full text of this research can be found here: Liu, S., Ferris, L. M., Hilbig, S., Asamoa, E., LaRue, J. L., Lyon, D., ... & Appelbaum, L. G. (2020). Dynamic vision training transfers positively to batting practice performance among collegiate baseball batters. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 51, 101759.

Despite the widespread use of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in research and clinical care, the underlying mechanisms-of-actions that mediate modulatory effects remain poorly understood. To fill this gap, we studied dose-response functions of TMS for modulation of visual processing. Our approach combined electroencephalography (EEG) with a...

Scientists and practitioners have long debated about the specific visual skills needed to excel at hitting a pitched baseball. To advance this debate, we evaluated the relationship between pre-season visual and oculomotor evaluations and pitch-by-pitch season performance data from professional baseball batters. Eye tracking, visual-motor, and optom...

Although the unwanted intrusive thoughts (UITs) exist widely in human beings and show similar characteristics between clinical and nonclinical forms, its control process remains unclear. Thoughts of choking under pressure, particularly among high-achieving athletes, represent a meaningful UIT type due to their psychological and performance-related...

The perception of visual motion is dependent on a set of occipitotemporal regions that are readily accessible to neuromodulation. The current study tested if paired-pulse Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (ppTMS) could modulate motion perception by stimulating the occipital cortex as participants viewed near-threshold motion dot stimuli. In this sh...

A growing body of evidence demonstrates visual, perceptual, and oculomotor abilities contribute to batting performance in baseball and there is interest in whether training such abilities can transfer positively to batting performance. The current study tested this question through a pre-registered randomized, and placebo-controlled intervention, c...

Scientists and practitioners have long debated about the specific visual skills needed to excel at hitting a pitched baseball. This study aimed to advance the debate by evaluating the relationship between pre-season visual and oculomotor evaluations and pitch-by-pitch season performance data from professional baseball batters. Eye tracking, visual-...

Elite athletes not only run faster, hit harder, and jump higher, but also see and react better. However, the specific visual-motor skills that differentiate high-achieving athletes are still not well understood. In this paper we examine 2317 athletes (1871 male) tested on the Nike SPARQ Sensory Station, a digital test battery measuring visual, perc...

Thought-suppression research showed, when asked to suppress a given thought (e.g., a white bear), people ironically report thinking more of the suppressed thought. Testing motor performance given avoidance goals (e.g., avoid putting the ball short of the target in golf) represents an interest to transfer thought-suppression findings to motor tasks....

Research methods in sport and exercise psychology are embedded in the domain’s network of methodological assumptions, historical traditions, and research themes. Sport and exercise psychology is a unique domain that derives and integrates concepts and terminologies from both psychology and kinesiology domains. Thus, research methods used to study t...

This is a trial pre-registration for a multi-site athletic training study. For the final publication of this project. Please check out the following article: Liu, S., Ferris, L. M., Hilbig, S., Asamoa, E., LaRue, J. L., Lyon, D., ... & Appelbaum, L. G. (2020). Dynamic vision training transfers positively to batting practice performance among colle...

This study aimed at exploring whether 3D technology enhances tennis decision-making under the conceptual framework of human performance model. A 3 (skill-level: varsity, club, recreational) × 3 (experimental condition: placebo, weak 3D [W3D], strong 3D [S3D]) between-participant design was used. Allocated to experimental conditions by a skill-level...

Research linking the "quiet eye" (QE) period to subsequent performance has not been systematically synthesized. In this paper we review the literature on the link between the two through non-intervention (Synthesis 1) and intervention (Synthesis 2) studies. In the first synthesis, 27 studies with 38 effect sizes resulted in a large mean effect (d̄...

Although extant meta-analyses support the notion that exercise results in cognitive performance enhancement, methodology shortcomings are noted among primary evidence. The present study examined relevant randomized controlled trials (RCTs) published in the past 20 years (1996–2015) for methodological concerns arise from Lord's paradox. Our analysis...

The study aimed to compare the motor skill performance acquired by analogy learning to that by explicit learning. Twenty-four college student novices were randomized eitehr to an explicit-learning group (n=12) or to an analogy learning group (n=12) to learn the golf-putting skill across eight trial blocks (each block has 30 trials). Both groups wer...

ABSTRACT Following ironic process theory (IPT), the authors aimed at investigating how attentional allocation affects participants' upper limb motion steadiness under low and high levels of mental load. A secondary purpose was to examine the validity of skin conductance level in measuring perception of pressure. The study consisted of 1 within-part...