Simon J Bennett

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• Professor (Full) at Liverpool John Moores University

It is essential in combat sports such as boxing for athletes to perceive the relevant visual information that enables them to anticipate and respond to their opponent's attacking and defensive moves. Here, we used virtual reality (VR), which enables standardization and reproducibility while maintaining perception-action coupling, to assess the infl...

Tracking a moving object with the eyes seems like a simple task but involves areas of prefrontal cortex (PFC) associated with attention, working memory and prediction. Increasing the demand on these processes with secondary tasks can affect eye movements and/or perceptual judgments. This is particularly evident in chronic or acute neurological cond...

Observing and voluntarily imitating the biological kinematics displayed by a model underpins the acquisition of new motor skills via sensorimotor processes linking perception with action. Differences in voluntary imitation in autism could be related to sensorimotor processing activity during action‐observation of biological motion, as well as how s...

The tendency to involuntarily imitate the actions of others (automatic imitation) can be modulated by social affiliative cues. Here, we explored whether the disruption to our social lives caused by the COVID-19 pandemic may subsequently influence automatic imitation. Three groups were initially presented a sentence comprehension task that featured...

Previous findings have highlighted how visual information directly influences the preparation and control of aiming movements. However, less is understood about the influence of a degraded visual context such as target blur. Participants aimed as quickly and accurately as possible to clear or blurred virtual targets using a stylus on a digitizing b...

It has been reported that behavior of experts and novices in various sporting tasks is impervious to the introduction of blur. However, studies have used diverse methods of blurring the visual stimulus (i.e., dioptric blur and Gaussian blur), and tasks that did not always preserve the normal perception-action coupling. In the current study, we deve...

Dynamic, interactive sports require athletes to identify, pick-up and process relevant information in a very limited time, in order to then make an appropriate response. Perceptual-cognitive skills are, therefore, a key determinant of elite sporting performance. Recently, sport scientists have investigated ways to assess and train perceptual-cognit...

The accuracy and precision of target-directed aiming is contingent upon the availability of online visual feedback. The present study aimed to examine the visual regulation of aiming with blurred vision. The aiming task was executed using a stylus on a graphics digitizing board, which was translated onto a screen in the form of a cursor (representi...

Purpose To examine the effects of a school-based karate intervention on academic achievement, psychosocial functioning, and physical fitness in children aged 7–8 years. Methods Twenty schools in 5 different European countries (2 second-grade classrooms per school) participated in a cluster randomized controlled trial (Sport at School trial). Parti...

Significance: Experts in different sports show superior decision making skills compared to novices, but little is known about its development in youth players. This study shows that the age-related improvements in visual cognition and accumulation of sport-specific experience explain a considerable amount of the development in decision making in vo...

Purpose: To examine the effects of a school-based karate intervention on academic achievement, psychosocial functioning, and physical fitness in children aged 7-8 years. Methods: Twenty schools in 5 different European countries (2 second-grade classrooms per school) participated in a cluster randomized controlled trial (Sport at School trial). P...

Children’s motor and cognitive functions develop rapidly during childhood. Physical activity and executive function are intricately linked during this important developmental period, with physical activity interventions consistently proving to benefit children’s executive function. However, it is less clear which type of physical activity shows the...

In many sports, elite players outperform novices on tests for perceptual-cognitive skills, such as anticipation, decision-making and pattern recall. However, the developmental trajectory of these perceptual-cognitive skills has received limited attention. Therefore, this study examined the development of anticipation, decision-making and pattern re...

Several years ago, our research group forwarded a model of goal-directed reaching and aiming that describes the processes involved in the optimization of speed, accuracy, and energy expenditure (Elliott et al. 2010). One of the main features of the model is the distinction between early impulse control, which is based on a comparison of expected to...

When pursuing a moving object, gaze is often momentarily shifted to an eccentric location. This alters vision of the pursuit object, thereby placing emphasis on extra-retinal input to update a spatio-temporal representation of the object trajectory. It has been suggested that predictive processes operating in pre-frontal cortex (PFC) provide extra-...

The issue of whether visually-mediated, simple reaction time (VRT) is faster in elite athletes is contentious. Here, we examined if and how VRT is affected by gaze stability in groups of international cricketers (16 females, 28 males), professional rugby-league players (21 males), and non-sporting controls (20 females, 30 males). VRT was recorded v...

It is well known that vision makes an important contribution to the control of goal-directed movements. However, task performance can be maintained when vision is interrupted, such as when a goalkeeper faces a free kick in soccer and the ball moves behind teammates and opposing players. To maintain behavior, it is necessary to process the visual in...

We examined the informational value of biological motion from the arm in predicting the location of a thrown ball. In three experiments, participants were classified as being skilled and less skilled based on their actual performance on the task (i.e., using a within-task criterion). We then presented participants with a range of stick figure repre...

The reduced efficacy of voluntary imitation in autism is suggested to be underpinned by differences in sensorimotor processing. We examined whether the imitation of novel atypical biological kinematics by autistic adults is enhanced by imitating a model in a predictable blocked practice trial order. This practice structure is expected to facilitate...

Despite the many studies on physical and physiological features of combat sport athletes, there has been considerably less consideration of psychological factors. Here, we present a narrative review of literature related to perceptual-cognitive skill in combat sports that require the athlete to score points by hitting or touching the opponent’s bod...

Whilst autistic individuals develop new internal action models during sensorimotor learning, the acquired movements are executed less accurately and with greater variability. Such movement profiles are related to differences in sensorimotor integration and/or altered feedforward/feedback sensorimotor control. We investigated the processes underlyin...

Executed actions become more variable when a performer concurrently observes different movements being executed. Increased variability (interference) is called 'motor contagion', which is underpinned by interacting lower-level sensorimotor, and top-down attentional, processes. Whilst these effects are reported in neurotypical individuals, it is unc...

Introduction. Volleyball is a fast ball sport and – consistent with similar sports – we know that elite players outperform their less-skilled counterparts on tests for perceptual-cognitive skills such as anticipation and decision making. What remains unclear, however, is how these perceptual-cognitive skills develop in youth players, and to what ex...

Background: Although sensorimotor processes subserving automatic imitation are operational in autism spectrum disorders (henceforth autism) (Sowden et al., 2016), similar underlying processes function less effectively in a voluntary context where the goal is to observe and imitate biological kinematics performed by a human model (De Myer et al., 19...

Motivated by recent findings of improved perceptual processing and perceptual-motor skill following stroboscopic vision training, the current study examined the performance and acquisition effects of stroboscopic vision methods that afford a different visual experience. In Experiment 1, we conducted a within-subject design study to examine performa...

The present study investigated the effect of stimulus-response compatibility on the representation of atypical biological kinematics during observational practice. A compatible group observed an atypical model that moved rightwards, whereas an incompatible group observed an atypical model that moved leftwards. Both groups were instructed to observe...

Examined sensorimotor development following task specific experience in autistic adults requiring substantial support

Lower-level and top-down processing underpins motor contagion in Autism Spectrum Disorders Background: A person becomes significantly more variable when performing a horizontal movement if they concurrently observe another person executing a vertical (incongruent) arm movement, compared to a horizontal (congruent) arm movement. Increased movement...

When human observers estimate the time-to-contact (TTC) of more than one object there is an asymmetric pattern of error consistent with prioritizing the lead object at the expense of the trail object. Here, we examined TTC estimation in a prediction motion task where two objects moved along horizontal trajectories (5 or 7.5 °/s) that had different...

An ability to predict the time-to-contact (TTC) of moving objects that become momentarily hidden is advantageous in everyday life and could be particularly so in fast-ball sports. Prediction motion (PM) experiments have sought to test this ability using tasks where a disappearing target moves toward a stationary destination. Here, we developed two...

We compared coincidence-anticipation performance in normal vision and stroboscopic vision as a function of time-on-task. Participants estimated the arrival time of a real object that moved with constant acceleration (-0.7, 0, +0.7 m/s2) in a pseudo-randomised order across 4 blocks of 30 trials in both vision conditions, received in a counter-balanc...

Background The importance of optimal and/or superior vision for participation in high-level sports remains the subject of considerable clinical research interest. Here, we examine the vision and visual history of elite/near-elite cricketers and rugby-league players. Methods Stereoacuity (TNO), colour vision, and distance (with/without pinhole) and...

Humans show an astonishing capability to learn sensorimotor behaviours. However, data from sensorimotor learning experiments suggest the integration of efferent sensorimotor commands, afferent sensorimotor information, and visual consequences of a performed action during learning is different in autism, leading to atypical representation of interna...

PURPOSE: Examine visual function of soccer players of different skill level and playing position. METHODS: Elite players from an English Premier League soccer club (n=49) and intermediate players (n=31) completed an assessment on a Nike SPARQ Sensory Station of: static and dynamic visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, accommodative-vergence facilit...

Social primes (pro-social, anti-social) can modulate mimicry behaviour. To date, these social modulation effects have been explained by the primed incentive to affiliate with another (Social Top-Down Response Modulation; STORM) and the primed active-self-concept leading to behaviour that is either consistent or inconsistent with the prime-construct...

An occlusion protocol was used to elucidate the respective roles of preprograming and online control during the quiet eye period of golf putting. Twenty-one novice golfers completed golf putts to 6-ft and 11-ft targets under full vision or with vision occluded on initiation of the backswing. Radial error (RE) was higher, and quiet eye was longer, w...

Recently our group forwarded a model of speed-accuracy relations in goal-directed reaching. A fundamental feature of our multiple process model was the distinction between two types of online regulation: impulse control and limb-target control. Impulse control begins during the initial stages of the movement trajectory and involves a comparison of...

Introduction Imitation is a complex behaviour underpinned with mechanisms that are crucial for learning new sensorimotor behaviours and social cognition. When imitating a novel action, the sensorimotor system is configured by representing and executing observed biological motion kinematics. Although this process is functional in early development i...

Sensorimotor Adaptation Underpins Imitation Learning of Biological Motion Kinematics in Autism Spectrum Disorders Background: Internal action models underpinning social interaction are developed by imitating biological motion. Although processes subserving automatic imitation of biological motion are functional in autism spectrum (autism) disorder...

We examined whether the temporal representation developed during motor training with reduced-frequency knowledge of results (KR; feedback available on every other trial) was transferred to an imitation learning task. To this end, four groups first practised a three-segment motor sequence task with different KR protocols. Two experimental groups rec...

Learning a novel movement requires a new set of kinematics to be represented by the sensorimotor system. This is often accomplished through imitation learning where lower-level sensorimotor processes are suggested to represent the biological motion kinematics associated with an observed movement. Top-down factors have the potential to influence thi...

We examined spatial estimation of accelerating objects (−8, −4, 0, +4, or +8 deg/s²) during occlusion (600, 1,000 ms) in a spatial prediction motion task. Multiple logistic regression indicated spatial estimation was influenced by these factors such that participants estimated objects with positive acceleration to reappear behind less often than th...

Introduction: A thorough review of extant literature on choice reaction time (CRT) and performance in combat sports reveals much equivocality, which in part stems from comparisons of quite distinct groups of participants (e.g., athlete vs. non-athlete). Therefore, the current study was designed to determine whether choice reaction time (CRT) is a p...

Cyclical upper-limb movements involuntarily deviate from a primary movement direction when the actor concurrently observes incongruent biological motion. We examined whether environmental context influences such motor interference during interpersonal observation-execution. Participants executed continuous horizontal arm movements while observing c...

The abrupt onset of a visual stimulus typically results in overt attentional capture, which can be quantified by saccadic eye movements. Here, we tested whether attentional capture following onset of task-irrelevant visual stimuli (new object) is reduced after a bout of intense physical exercise. A group of participants performed a visual search ta...

We examined whether adults with autism had difficulty imitating atypical biological kinematics. To reduce the impact that higher-order processes have on imitation we used a non-human agent model to control social attention, and removed end-state target goals in half of the trials to minimise goal-directed attention. Findings showed that only neurot...

Cyclical upper-limb movement can involuntarily deviate from its primary movement axis when the performer concurrently observes incongruent biological motion (i.e., interpersonal observation-execution). The current study examined the social modulation of such involuntary motor interference using a protocol that reflected everyday social interactions...

Fast moving objects are often transiently occluded in our normal surrounds as they pass behind other surfaces and objects. The consequent loss of drive from visual feedback can be compensated by extra-retinal input. Evidence from behavioural studies indicates that gaze orientation during transient occlusion is not simply a reflexive response but ca...

The current study examined temporal estimation in a prediction motion task where participants were cued to overtly pursue one of two moving objects, which could either arrive first, i.e., shortest [time to contact (TTC)] or second (i.e., longest TTC) after a period of occlusion. Participants were instructed to estimate TTC of the first-arriving obj...

ABSTRACT Two experiments were conducted to examine time and energy optimization strategies for movements made with and against gravity. In Experiment 1, the authors manipulated concurrent visual feedback, and knowledge about feedback. When vision was eliminated upon movement initiation, participants exhibited greater undershooting, both with their...

Background Upper limb motor control in fast, goal-directed aiming is altered in tetraplegics following posterior-deltoid musculotendinous transfer. Specifically, movements have similar end-point accuracy but longer duration and lower peak velocity than those of age-matched, neurotypical controls. Here, we examine in detail the interplay between pri...

The acquisition of sensorimotor parameters that control goal-directed motor behaviors occurs by observing another person in the absence of efferent and afferent motor signals. This is observational practice. During such observation, biological motion properties associated with the observed person are coded into a representation that controls motor...

Increased involuntary arm movement deviation when observing an incongruent human arm movement has been interpreted as a strong indicator of motor contagion. Here, we examined the contribution of trajectory and end-point information on motor contagion by altering congruence between the stimulus and arm movement. Participants performed cyclical horiz...

Background: Imitation is intricately linked to developing social relationships and motor learning. These interpersonal contexts require the appropriate imitation of biological motion, which is suggested to be impaired in autism spectrum conditions (autism) due to processes underpinning social modulation and motor control. These suggestions were bas...

This study investigated whether within-task expertise affects the reported asymmetry in execution time exhibited in reactive and self-initiated movements. Karate practitioners and no-karate practitioners were compared performing a reverse punch in reaction to an external stimulus or following the intention to produce a response (self-initiated). Th...

Abstract Neurophysiological and behavioural research has linked observational practice (OP) to a mirroring mechanism encompassing the action-observation network (AON). Although, the original findings indicate that biological stimuli alone activate the AON, recent evidence has shown sensitivity to non-biological stimuli. Thus, the AON is suggested t...

Abstract Despite the performance concerns of dehydration in other sports, there are currently no data on the effects of rapid weight-loss on the physical and cognitive performance of jockeys in a sport-specific context. In a randomised crossover design, eight Great Britain (GB) male licensed jockeys were assessed for chest strength, leg strength, s...

We identified the information used to anticipate throw direction in handball. In two experiments, we examined how anticipation performance is affected when the information from one of five body areas (right arm, shoulders, hips, trunk, or total throw side) was either neutralized or decoupled from the motion of other body segments. In the first expe...

Here we examined ocular pursuit and spatial estimation in a linear prediction motion task that emphasized extrapolation of occluded accelerative object motion. Results from the ocular response up to occlusion showed that there was evidence in the eye position, velocity and acceleration data that participants were attempting to pursue the moving obj...

ABSTRACT Multisensory perception and action in 3-ball cascade juggling was investigated in intermediate-skilled performers by manipulating vision (full or lower field restricted) or ball weight (equal or different). There were main effects for both independent variables but no interactions. Manipulation of ball weight had a more pervasive effect on...

The purpose of this study was to investigate postural adjustments in one-handed ball catching. Specifically, the functional role of anticipatory postural adjustments (APA) during the initial arm raising and subsequent postural adjustments (SPA) for equilibrium control and ball-hand impact were scrutinized. Full-body kinematics and kinetics allowed...

The current study examined the effect of interocular delay in a manual aiming task that required accurate end-point placement, but not precise control of a grip aperture. Participants aimed in binocular, monocular, or alternating monocular vision conditions. For the latter, 25ms monocular samples were provided to alternate eyes without delay (0ms),...

Abstract Despite the performance concerns of dehydration in other sports, there are currently no data on the effects of rapid weightloss on the physical and cognitive performance of jockeys in a sport-specific context. In a randomised crossover design, eight Great Britain (GB) male licensed jockeys were assessed for chest strength, leg strength, si...

Smooth pursuit during prolonged occlusion is improved in the presence of sensorimotor signals when tracking self-generated target motion. The current study investigated whether concurrent arm tracking of externally-generated target motion conveys a similar facilitation to ocular pursuit of transiently occluded constant velocity (Experiment 1) or ac...

We examined the hypothesis that different processes and representations are associated with the learning of a movement sequence through motor-execution and action-observation. Following a pre-test in which participants attempted to achieve an absolute, and relative, time goal in a sequential goal-directed aiming movement, participants received eith...

This study examined if, and how, implicit advance knowledge of upcoming ball speed influences the interplay between arm movements and concomitant postural adjustments in one-handed catching. While standing, subjects were asked to catch balls that were presented with or without implicit advance knowledge of four different ball speeds. Full body kine...

This article celebrates the contribution that the American Journal of Psychology (AJP) has made to the area of perceptual-motor skill over its 125-year history. We highlight the articles published in AJP and trace the technical and theoretical developments that stem from this groundbreaking work. Included in our overview are AJP articles on the exc...

Ο επιδέξιος χειρισμός, το πιάσιμο ενός αντικειμένου καθώς και ο ικανοποιητικός έλεγχος της στάσης του σώματος και της ισορροπίας απαιτούν υψηλά επίπεδα νευρομυϊκού συντονισμού. Το θεωρητικό υπόβαθρο της κριτικής ανάλυσης βασίζεται στις εργασίες των Bernstein (1967), Gibson (1979). Σύμφωνα με αυτό το θεωρητικό πλαίσιο η ανάπτυξη του συντονισμού της...

We examined the suggestion that some of the processes subserving learning through action-observation and motor-execution are different because sensory motor reafference is not available while the limb is at rest in the former condition. We confirmed the action-observation and motor-execution groups learned equally the absolute time and relative tim...

The current study examined the movement kinematics of older adults when aiming to vertically oriented targets. Late middle-age and early old-age participants completed 20 trials to a small target located downward or upward by 0.16 m from a home position at shoulder height. Aiming direction had a significant effect, resulting in more submovements, w...

This study examined how explicit advance knowledge might influence adaptive behavior to visual occlusions. Catching performance and kinematics of good ball catchers were compared between no, early and late occlusion trials. Discrete visual occlusions of 400 ms, occurring early or late in the ball's approach trajectory, were randomly interspersed be...

The present study examined the effect of timing constraints and advance knowledge on eye-hand coordination strategy in a sequential pointing task. Participants were required to point at two successively appearing targets on a screen while the inter-stimulus interval (ISI) and the trial order were manipulated, such that timing constraints were high...

We used principal components analysis (PCA) to investigate variations in the dynamical structure of handball penalty shots as a factor of target location and phase of shot. Participants completed a total of 10 successful shots to each of four target locations in the handball goal. Three dimensional movement time series data were analyzed. Also, dat...

The purpose of this experiment was to examine the eVects of advance knowledge on the kinematics of one-handed catching. Balls were launched from a distance of 8.4 m by a ball-projection machine with adjustable launching speed. Fifteen skilled ball catchers caught 160 balls with their preferred hand under blocked-order (4 blocks, each comprising 20...

In many situations, it is necessary to predict when a moving object will reach a given target even though the object may be partially or entirely occluded. Typically, one would track the moving object with eye movements, but it remains unclear whether ocular pursuit facilitates accurate estimation of time-to-contact (TTC). The present study examine...

This article reviews the behavioral literature on the control of goal-directed aiming and presents a multiple-process model of limb control. The model builds on recent variants of Woodworth's (1899) two-component model of speed-accuracy relations in voluntary movement and incorporates ideas about dynamic online limb control based on prior expectati...

Cervical spinal lesions at C6 result in paralysis of the triceps brachii while leaving deltoid and elbow flexor function intact. We examined the spatial-temporal characteristics of goal-directed aiming movements performed by C6 tetraplegics who had undergone musculotendinous transfer surgery in which the posterior deltoid replaces the triceps as th...

This study examined the inter-ocular (alternating monocular samples) and intra-ocular (monocular or binocular samples) integration during a prehensile task with a range of occlusion intervals (0-75 ms). In the first experiment, participants were uncertain regarding the impending visual condition, as well as target size and location. In the second e...

The present study examined the influence of long-term (i.e., between-trial) and short-term (i.e., within-trial) predictive mechanisms on ocular pursuit during transient occlusion. To this end, we compared ocular pursuit of accelerative and decelerative target motion in trials that were presented in random or blocked-order. Catch trials in which tar...

This study was designed to examine the generality of motor learning by action-observation. During practice, action-observation participants watched a learning model (e.g., physical practice participants) perform a motor sequence-timing task involving mouse/cursor movements on a computer screen; control participants watched a blank screen. Participa...

The purpose of this experiment was to examine the effects of advance knowledge on the kinematics of one-handed catching. Balls were launched from a distance of 8.4m by a ball-projection machine with adjustable launching speed. Fifteen skilled ball catchers caught 160 balls with their preferred hand under blocked-order (4 blocks, each comprising 20...

The present study examined for the first time both the ocular and manual responses in a prediction motion (PM) task requiring participants to estimate time-to-contact (TTC) of an accelerating object. Results showed that while the ocular response initially matched well the object motion, smooth pursuit decayed towards zero following object occlusion...

No literature exists to document skill-related differences in shotgun shooting and whether these may be a function of eye movements and control of gun motion. We therefore conducted an exploratory investigation of the visual search behaviors and gun barrel kinematics used by elite and subelite shooters across the three shotgun shooting subdisciplin...

To interact with the environment, an individual must code, store, and translate spatial information into the appropriate motor commands for achieving an outcome. Working from this premise, Vision and Goal-Directed Movement: Neurobehavioral Perspectives discusses how visual perception, attention, and memory are linked to the processes of movement pr...

The study examined symmetrical bimanual coordination of children with spastic hemiparetic cerebral palsy (SHCP) and a typically developing (TD) control group under conditions of visual feedback created by placing a glass screen, opaque screen or a mirror ("mirror box") between the arms. The "mirror box" creates a visual illusion, which gives rise t...

The present experiment examined learning of a three-segment movement sequence using physical or observational practice, and whether permitting eye movements to be made during observation is a prerequisite for learning such a movement sequence. Specifically, participants were required to move a mouse cursor through a three-segment movement sequence...

We often complete step downs in the absence of visual feedback of the lower-limbs, and/or of the area on the ground where we intend to land (e.g. when descending a step whilst carrying a laundry basket). Therefore, the present study examined whether information from lower visual field (lvf) provides any advantage to the control of step descent. Ten...

The aim of this paper is to provide a contemporary summary of statistical and non-statistical meta-analytic procedures that have relevance to the type of experimental designs often used by sport scientists when examining differences/change in dependent measure(s) as a result of one or more independent manipulation(s). Using worked examples from stu...