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Recognizing fencing attacks from auditory and visual information: A comparison between expert fencers and novices
Abstract
Objective The present study investigated the impact of audible and visual information for the prediction of attack movements in fencing, the raddoppio and the fleche. Method A temporal occlusion paradigm with visually (i.e. soundless videos), auditory (i.e. the audio track of the videos), and audio-visually (i.e. video with audio track) presented attack movements was used to investigate 15 experts’ (5 women; M age = 17.2 years, age range = 15–21) and 17 novices’ (15 women; M age = 23.4 years, age range = 19–30) performance in predicting fencing attacks. Results Results showed that the number of correct answers for all stimulus conditions increased for both groups the later a video was occluded. Moreover, experts outperformed novices in all stimulus conditions. Regarding auditory information, results indicated that neither group efficiently integrated the sounds of fencing steps with the visually provided information, however, experts were better able than novices to make use of auditory information if no visual information was provided and to filter out auditory information otherwise. Conclusion Future research might address the issue to what extent athletes might benefit from training interventions focusing on the use of auditory information.
... Contextual information in sports is often perceived through multi-modal stimuli, such as visual, auditory, tactile, and proprioceptive. While vision is the primary mode of information acquisition for athletes, the time-sensitivity of the auditory system (Grondin & McAuley, 2009;Murgia, et al., 2011), and the possible advantage of audiovisual integration (Allerdissen, et al., 2017;Bischoff et al., 2014), have led to an increasing interest in the function of auditory information in sports. Müller and Abernethy (2012) proposed an anticipation model in striking sports. ...
... Similarly, when fencing athletes use visual and auditory information with different temporal occlusion to predict the attack movements of the opponent, the prediction effect was not improved with the addition of auditory information. Expert fencers failed to efficiently integrate the sounds of fencing steps with visual information (Allerdissen et al., 2017). The above studies show that the utilization of auditory information may be conditional, and the integration of information from the auditory and visual modalities may be influenced by additional factors. ...
... However, research focusing on striking sports has, to date, neglected the early flight information when presenting racket-ball contact sound (such as Bischoff et al., 2014;Park et al., 2016). Moreover, a study using the temporal occlusion paradigm showed that the utilization of information from a different modality is varied at different occlusion points, that is, the information richness of each modality may influence the other's applications (Allerdissen et al., 2017). In view of this, we assumed that the landing perception of the shuttles was more accurate under audio-visual conditions than in visual-only conditions, especially when early shuttle flight information was withheld. ...
Based on the role of the high temporal sensitivity of the auditory modality and the advantage of audio-visual integration in motion perception and anticipation, we investigated the effect of audio-visual information on landing perception in badminton through two experiments; and we explored the regulatory role of attention load. In this study, experienced badminton players were asked to predict the landing position of the shuttle under the conditions of video (visual) or audio-video (audio-visual) presentation. We manipulated flight information or attention load. The results of Experiment 1 showed that, whether the visual information was rich or not, that is, whether or not it contained the early flight trajectory, the addition of auditory information played a promoting role. The results of Experiment 2 showed that attention load regulated the facilitation of multi-modal integration on landing perception. The facilitation of audio-visual information was impaired under high load, meaning that audio-visual integration tended to be guided by attention from top to bottom. The results support the superiority effect of multi-modal integration, suggesting that adding auditory perception training to sports training could significantly improve athletes’ performance.
... Precise, accurate, and fast anticipation abilities form the premise for athletes to successfully execute techniques and strategies, and are among the key factors directly affecting the outcome of a competition (Krabben et al., 2019;Martínez et al., 2019). In combat sports (e.g., boxing, judo, fencing, taekwondo), athletes compete at close range and need excellent perceptual skills to anticipate, react and respond to the opponent's attacks (Ripoll et al., 1995;Piras et al., 2014;Allerdissen et al., 2017;Ma, 2017a). Athletes need to pay attention to their opponents and adjust their attack and defense strategies to the opponent's actions. ...
... For example, combined with different stimuli (non-sport specific or sport-specific) and responses (nonspecific button/key or sport movements), it is possible to test different types of reaction times, such as simple reaction time and/or choice reaction time (Mouelhi Guizani et al., 2006). Additionally, some studies have required participants to perform in-situ combat movements, while others have done so in front of a screen or receive auditory guidance (Rosalie and Müller, 2013;Piras et al., 2014;Allerdissen et al., 2017). Together, these studies demonstrate the advantages of experts over non-specialists in receiving and processing different sensory information. ...
... The expert/non-expert research paradigm is one of the most widely used models in the field of perceptual anticipation (Williams et al., 2002). This paradigm compares performance between experts and non-experts by establishing different tasks and scenarios to identify internal mechanisms underlying the experts' advanced motor skills in order to explore how these competencies are developed and to improve the performance of suboptimal athletes (Ripoll et al., 1995;Mori et al., 2002;Chan et al., 2011;Ottoboni et al., 2014;Milazzo et al., 2015;Allerdissen et al., 2017;Bianco et al., 2017). To our knowledge, there are three review articles (both narrative and systematic reviews) in combat sport. ...
In order to systematically evaluate perceptual anticipation between experts and non-experts for different kinds of combat sports, we needed to perform a comprehensive assessment. In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched four English-language and three Chinese-language databases that used expert/non-expert research paradigms, to explore perceptual anticipation in combat sports. We employed a random effects model for pooled analyses using the inverse variance method. We included 27 eligible studies involving 233 datasets in this meta-analysis. We observed large effect sizes for the differences between experts and non-experts in both response accuracy (1.51; 95% CI: 1.15 to 1.87, p < 0.05) and reaction time (-0.91; 95% CI: −1.08 to−0.73, p < 0.05). We also observed substantial differences between experts and non-experts in the mean duration of visual fixations per trial (1.51; 95% CI: −2.40 to −0.63, p < 0.05), but not in the visual fixation duration (0.16; −061 to 0.92, p = 0.69). Taken together, high-level combat athletes have more advantages in perceptual anticipation than lower-level athletes, showing faster and more accurate responses when facing the opponent's attacks, as well as focusing on fewer points of visual fixations than novice athletes. Different types of combat sports and stimulus presentations affect perceptual anticipation abilities to varying extents in relation to outcome measures, with more pronounced expertise in a stimulus that is closer to real-world situations.
Systematic review registration
https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?ID=CRD42021226343, PROSPERO CRD42021226343.
... Demos et al. (2012) concluded that emergent perceptuo-motor couplings should occur with task-related information to enhance instantaneous coordination (see also Kelso, 1995). Under the multiple number of perceptual information, a study (Allerdissen, Güldenpenning, Schack, and Bläsing, 2017) reported that the response to the perceptual feedback can be different, depending on personal experience. The authors measured timing of the occlusion of fencing novices and experts when they watched opponent's fencing attacks in a video, which demonstrated that the novices showed the negative effect in the audio-visual 86 condition, compared to vision-only condition. ...
... The experts, however, show no difference between the visual-audio and the visual-only condition because auditory information provided together with vision can be non-task-related for novices, but task-related for experts. Allerdissen et al. (2017) explained that non-task-related perceptual feedback might cause cognitive overload, which negatively influences novices. ...
... One possible explanation is the effect of integration of auditory information with other perceptual modalities, which is called multisensory integration. Allerdissen et al. (2017) demonstrated that fencing experts showed almost the same pattern of results with both audio-visual and visual information. Demos et al. (2012) also suggested that the level of interpersonal coordination can be improved by audio-visual feedback, but can be decreased if auditory feedback is not task-related like music. ...
Today’s mobile communication technologies have increased verbal and text-based communication with other humans, social robots and intelligent virtual assistants. On the other hand, the technologies reduce face-to-face communication. This social issue is critical because decreasing direct interactions may cause difficulty in reading social and environmental cues, thereby impeding the development of overall social skills. Recently, scientists have studied the importance of nonverbal interpersonal activities to social skills, by measuring human behavioral and neurophysiological patterns. These interdisciplinary approaches are in line with the European Union research project, “Socializing sensorimotor contingencies” (socSMCs), which aims to improve the capability of social robots and properly deal with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Therefore, modelling and benchmarking healthy humans’ social behavior are fundamental to establish a foundation for research on emergence and enhancement of interpersonal coordination. In this research project, two different experimental settings were categorized depending on interactants’ distance: distal and proximal settings, where the structure of engaged cognitive systems changes, and the level of socSMCs differs. As a part of the project, this dissertation work referred to this spatial framework. Additionally, single-sensor solutions were developed to reduce costs and efforts in measuring human behaviors, recognizing the social behaviors, and enhancing interpersonal coordination. First of all, algorithms using a head worn inertial measurement unit (H-IMU) were developed to measure human kinematics, as a baseline for social behaviors. The results confirmed that the H-IMU can measure individual gait parameters by analyzing only head kinematics. Secondly, as a distal sensorimotor contingency, interpersonal relationship was considered with respect to a dynamic structure of three interacting components: positivity, mutual attentiveness, and coordination. The H-IMUs monitored the social behavioral events relying on kinematics of the head orientation and oscillation during walk and talk, which can contribute to estimate the level of rapport. Finally, in a new collaborative task with the proposed IMU-based tablet application, results verified effects of different auditory-motor feedbacks on the enhancement of interpersonal coordination in a proximal setting. This dissertation has an intensive interdisciplinary character: Technological development, in the areas of sensor and software engineering, was required to apply to or solve issues in direct relation to predefined behavioral scientific questions in two different settings (distal and proximal). The given frame served as a reference in the development of the methods and settings in this dissertation. The proposed IMU-based solutions are also promising for various future applications due to widespread wearable devices with IMUs.
... Previous research revealed that auditory stimuli might be of importance for anticipation, and thus for the performance in sports, but there are too few studies available in that field. In a recent study in fencing, Allerdissen, Güldenpenning, Schack and Bläsing (2017) analyzed the response behavior to visual, auditory and both information together, and observed that visual information is more important than auditory information, but experts are better in using auditory information than lower skilled athletes. Sors et al. (2017) analyzed visual and auditory information in soccer and volleyball, and found that although auditory signals led to earlier reactions (thus, acoustics can be processed faster than visual input), such information were not used to predict motion outcomes (Allerdissen, Güldenpenning, Schack & Bläsing, 2017, Sors et al., 2017. ...
... In a recent study in fencing, Allerdissen, Güldenpenning, Schack and Bläsing (2017) analyzed the response behavior to visual, auditory and both information together, and observed that visual information is more important than auditory information, but experts are better in using auditory information than lower skilled athletes. Sors et al. (2017) analyzed visual and auditory information in soccer and volleyball, and found that although auditory signals led to earlier reactions (thus, acoustics can be processed faster than visual input), such information were not used to predict motion outcomes (Allerdissen, Güldenpenning, Schack & Bläsing, 2017, Sors et al., 2017. That is in line with a study of Wang, Liao, Lundgren Lyckvi and Chen (2016). ...
... Based on our results, visual cues are more important than auditory cues both for novices and advanced table tennis players. The results of the present studies with novices and advanced players are in line with previous research in which it was found that visual information, especially kinematic information, are more important than auditory information (e.g. in fencing,Allerdissen, Güldenpenning, Schack & Bläsing, 2017 or conducting, Colley, Varlet, MacRitchie & Keller, 2018.Santos et al. (2017) could only show that auditory information can be used to perceive flat hits in table tennis but auditory information alone is not usable to differentiate between fast, moderate or slow rotations. Although it is possible that the missing auditory information will lead to a higher cognitive load(Grandjean, Quoilin & Duque, 2019), no differences in the subjective effort were seen in study A (novices) and study B (advanced players) when analyzing the different conditions with manipulations of auditory information. ...
It is well-known that visual information is essential for anticipation in table tennis but it not clarified whether auditory cues are also used. Therefore, we performed two in-situ studies, in which novices (study A) and advanced players (study B) responded to strokes of a real opponent or a ball machine by returning with forehand counters (study A) and forehand top spins (study B) to a given target area on the table. We assessed the parameters "hit quality" and "subjective effort". In study A, we provided four conditions: normal, a noise-cancelling headphone and earplugs to dampen auditory information, other noise-cancelling headphones and earplugs to remove almost all environmental sounds, and the same head-phones with additional bright noise to remove all sounds. In study B, we performed three tests (irregular play and regular play with an opponent and response to regular balls of a ball machine) under two conditions: normal and noise-cancelling headphones with the additional bright noise. In both studies, no significant differences between all conditions for "hit quality" and "subjective effort" (all p>0.05) were found. We conclude that auditory information, as well as their volume, have no influence on the hit quality in table tennis for novices and advanced players.
... The role of natural movement sounds in auditory actionperception coupling has been studied in sports domains and daily physical activity as part of more general research. Among the topics investigated, studies have examined the influence of natural movement sounds on movement execution (Agostini et al., 2004;Kennel et al., 2015), sense of agency (self vs. other) (Murgia et al., 2012a;Kennel et al., 2014a,b), action anticipation (Cesari et al., 2014;Allerdissen et al., 2017;Camponogara et al., 2017;Sors et al., 2017Sors et al., , 2018aCañal-Bruland et al., 2018), and motor learning (Pizzera et al., 2017). ...
... Specifically, only experts were able to modify their underfoot force and apply muscle synergies that were essentially similar to those used during a real jump on a skateboard only by hearing the movement sounds. Similarly, studies have also demonstrated that auditory information generated by movements may be used to predict a attack movement in fencing (Allerdissen et al., 2017), the shot power in soccer (Sors et al., 2017(Sors et al., , 2018a, and the length of volleyball serves (Sors et al., 2018b). These behavioral data collectively indicate that the auditory-motor coupling generated during extensive training significantly interacts with athletes' internal motor simulation as experienced athletes are not only able to extract highly specific information from action-related sounds but also use this information to anticipate another person's movements based on action prediction mechanisms. ...
... The large body of research here reviewed indicates that auditory information provides crucial information about agency (Murgia et al., 2012a;Kennel et al., 2014a,b), movement control and timing (e.g., Chollet et al., 1988Chollet et al., , 1992Mattes, 2011, 2016;Sigrist et al., 2016;Schaffert et al., 2017), movement execution (e.g., Agostini et al., 2004;Konttinen et al., 2004;Baudry et al., 2006;Murgia et al., 2012b;Hunt, 2013, 2015;Kennel et al., 2015), and performance error/deviation (e.g., Höner et al., 2004;Godbout and Boyd, 2010;Wolf et al., 2011;Godbout et al., 2014;Ramezanzade et al., 2014;Tarnas and Schaffert, 2017). Behavioral data also suggest that the auditory-motor coupling generated during extensive training significantly interacts with athletes' internal motor simulation (Murgia et al., 2012a;Kennel et al., 2014a,b;Pizzera et al., 2017), as shown by studies demonstrating that skilled athletes are able to extract highly specific information from actionrelated sounds (e.g., Roberts et al., 2005) and predict another person's movements based on action prediction mechanisms (e.g., Cesari et al., 2014;Camponogara et al., 2017;Allerdissen et al., 2017). These findings corroborate a robust body of neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies indicating that the mirror neuron system and a widely distributed neuroanatomical network is involved in the processing of action sounds (e.g., Fadiga et al., 1995;Kohler et al., 2002;Aziz-Zadeh et al., 2004Bidet-Caulet et al., 2005;Lewis et al., 2005;Pizzamiglio et al., 2005;Pazzaglia et al., 2008;Ticini et al., 2012;Schmitz et al., 2013). ...
The role of auditory information on perceptual-motor processes has gained increased interest in sports and psychology research in recent years. Numerous neurobiological and behavioral studies have demonstrated the close interaction between auditory and motor areas of the brain, and the importance of auditory information for movement execution, control, and learning. In applied research, artificially produced acoustic information and real-time auditory information have been implemented in sports and rehabilitation to improve motor performance in athletes, healthy individuals, and patients affected by neurological or movement disorders. However, this research is scattered both across time and scientific disciplines. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview about the interaction between movement and sound and review the current literature regarding the effect of natural movement sounds, movement sonification, and rhythmic auditory information in sports and motor rehabilitation. The focus here is threefold: firstly, we provide an overview of empirical studies using natural movement sounds and movement sonification in sports. Secondly, we review recent clinical and applied studies using rhythmic auditory information and sonification in rehabilitation, addressing in particular studies on Parkinson’s disease and stroke. Thirdly, we summarize current evidence regarding the cognitive mechanisms and neural correlates underlying the processing of auditory information during movement execution and its mental representation. The current state of knowledge here reviewed provides evidence of the feasibility and effectiveness of the application of auditory information to improve movement execution, control, and (re)learning in sports and motor rehabilitation. Findings also corroborate the critical role of auditory information in auditory-motor coupling during motor (re)learning and performance, suggesting that this area of clinical and applied research has a large potential that is yet to be fully explored.
... Some recent research revealed that, by means of auditory information alone, athletes are able to detect the movement intentions of an opponent in basketball [27] as well as to discriminate among different types of fencing attacks [28]. Moreover, it has been observed that the manipulation of the sound intensity of tennis strokes significantly influences predictions of their outcome [29]. ...
... Previous research on anticipation in sport focused almost exclusively on the visual domain, highlighting the importance of visual information, especially in ball sports [4,6]. However, in recent years the relevant role of auditory information has started to emerge, both as a means for performance improvement [26] and as a precious source of cues for anticipation [27][28][29]. In this regard, Sors and colleagues [30] observed that, to discriminate the power of soccer penalty kicks and volleyball smashes, early auditory cues are more informative than the respective visual cues. ...
... Indeed, in the last two years different studies demonstrated that opponents' behaviours can be predicted also on the basis of auditory information. This has been observed in various sports: for instance, it has been shown that basketball players are able to detect the movement intentions of an opponent [27]; fencers can discriminate among different types of fencing attacks [28]; and tennis players differently predict the length of strokes depending on the sound intensity [29]. Within this line of research, the current study reveals that early auditory information can provide useful cues for the anticipation of volleyball serves. ...
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 terms of stimuli (audiovisual congruent vs audiovisual incongruent; audio only vs video only) and/or in terms of number of possible answers. In particular, expert volleyball players were asked to predict the length of temporally occluded overhand serves, choosing among either two or three possible landing sectors. Response accuracy and response times were measured. For the incongruent stimuli, the results revealed that the percentage of predictions in line with early auditory information was significantly higher than the respective percentage of predictions in line with early visual information. For unimodal stimuli, prediction accuracy was significantly higher on the basis of auditory information than on the basis of visual information, without any difference on response times. Taken together, the results highlighted the relevance of early auditory information for the prediction of volleyball serves’ length.
... Authors indicated that audio-visual feedback does not always lead to a positive effect, but it can cause interference. In an experiment on predictions of opponent's fencing attacks, Allerdissen et al. (2017) also reported that novices showed less performance in the audio-visual condition than in the visual-only condition. Allerdissen et al. (2017) explained that the meaningless additional auditory information might induce cognitive overload. ...
... In an experiment on predictions of opponent's fencing attacks, Allerdissen et al. (2017) also reported that novices showed less performance in the audio-visual condition than in the visual-only condition. Allerdissen et al. (2017) explained that the meaningless additional auditory information might induce cognitive overload. Demos et al. (2012) reasoned that the spontaneous coordination would result from emergent perceptuo-motor couplings in the brain (Kelso, 1995). ...
... A plausible explanation is the integration of auditory information with perceptual information of other modalities in terms of multisensory integration. For example, Allerdissen et al. (2017) reported that fencing experts showed nearly the same pattern of results in both audio-visual and visual conditions. A similar suggestion had been made by Demos et al. (2012): The authors showed that the level of coordination can be enhanced by audio-visual information, but can be reduced by non-task-related auditory stimuli like music. ...
When two individuals interact in a collaborative task, such as carrying a sofa or a table, usually spatiotemporal coordination of individual motor behavior will emerge. In many cases, interpersonal coordination can arise independently of verbal communication, based on the observation of the partners' movements and/or the object's movements. In this study, we investigate how social coupling between two individuals can emerge in a collaborative task under different modes of perceptual information. A visual reference condition was compared with three different conditions with new types of additional auditory feedback provided in real time: effect-based auditory feedback, performance-based auditory feedback, and combined effect/performance-based auditory feedback. We have developed a new paradigm in which the actions of both participants continuously result in a seamlessly merged effect on an object simulated by a tablet computer application. Here, participants should temporally synchronize their movements with a 90° phase difference and precisely adjust the finger dynamics in order to keep the object (a ball) accurately rotating on a given circular trajectory on the tablet. Results demonstrate that interpersonal coordination in a joint task can be altered by different kinds of additional auditory information in various ways.
... Analysis of scientific literature indicates that the main accent in athletes' training is made on the development of technical and tactical skills [1,2,7,8,9,11,14,15]. At the same time, in official documents (programs for sport clubs and colleges) tactical training is not substantiated properly [3,4,7,12]. ...
... However, both technologies were developed only for fencers. As for other combat sports, the most works are devoted to improvement of tactical skills only in combination with technical [1,2,5,6,17]. ...
The present work studied specifics of tactical training as an important side of training process in modern Olympic combat sports. In most scientific papers and official documents, the views on tactical training are contradictory and do not reflect all current trends of the development of Olympic combat sports. The aim of the research was to analyze practical experience of athletes’ tactical training in modern Olympic combat sports at the stage of previous basic development. Material and Methods. We recruited 40 experts in Olympic fencing, boxing, wrestling, judo, taekwondo and karate. They were asked to fill out a form (questionnaire), which included 15 questions on athletes’ tactical training such as directions, means and methods, control of tactical preparedness, components of tactical knowledge. In order to confirm the accuracy of the answers, the concordance coefficient (W) was determined in each group of experts. To compare the answers in different expert groups we also used the average rank. Results. It was found that a lot of issues of tactical training were estimated as the most significant in most combat sports. The same was typical for he least significant issues. The agreement of experts' opinions in different sports within one question was average, strong, weak (p<0.05) or unreliable (p>0.05). In some questions expert’s answers were similar, but in other questions they were different inside groups and between them. Average (0.69W≥0.5, p<0.05) and strong concordance (W≥0.7, p<0.05) was found in such groups of experts: fencing – about visual methods of tactical training; wrestling – about visual and practical methods; boxing – about directions and verbal methods; judo – only about visual methods; taekwondo – in all questions except verbal methods; karate – in all questions. Conclusions. It is recommended to use the common algorithm for improving athletes’ tactical preparedness with the possibility of its modification in particular kinds of Olympic combat sports. This algorithm consists of six steps and is aimed to study the basic elements, techniques, options of tactical actions which are essential for modern Olympic combat sports.
... Під достатньою фізичною та техніко-тактичною підготовленістю тренера розуміємо вміння демонструвати тренувальні вправи, елементи техніки спортивних вправ, техніко-тактичні дії з обраної спортивної спеціалізації, а також ряд інших функціональних обов'язків (Пітин, 2019). Враховуючи специфіку спортивних єдиноборств, тренер повинен володіти прийомами страхування спортсменів під час виконання вправ, методами збору, метрологічної обробки і аналізу спеціальної інформації з використанням комп'ютерної техніки про стан підготовленості, арсенал змагальних дій, тактику змагальної діяльності спортсмена, його партнерів та можливих майбутніх суперників тощо (Allerdissen, Güldenpenning, Schack, & Bläsing, 2017;Kriventsova, Iermakov, Bartnik, Nosko, & Cynarski, 2017). ...
... У цьому контексті вирішального значення набуває рівень технічної й тактичної майстерності майбутнього тренера, оскільки саме ці сторони підготовленості є одними з найважливіших для спортивних єдиноборств. Для їх формування найбільш перспективним вважається використання інтерактивних засобів, оскільки вони дозволяють опрацьовувати більші масиви даних та забезпечують оперативний зворотній зв'язок між викладачами та студентами (Allerdissen, Güldenpenning, Schack, & Bläsing, 2017;Kriventsova, Iermakov, Bartnik, Nosko, & Cynarski, 2017;Korobeynikov, Korobeinikova, Mytskan, & Cynarski, 2017). ...
Анотація. Мета: розробити тренажерний пристрій, спрямований на формування та контроль професійної підготовленості майбутніх тренерів зі спортивних єдиноборств. Матеріал і методи . Теоретичний аналіз, узагальнення даних науково-методичної літератури та мережі Інтернет дозволили виявити проблемне поле формування професійної підготовленості майбутніх тренерів зі спортивних єдиноборств. Аналіз документів (навчальних та робочих програм дисципліни «Теорія і методика обраного виду спорту» чи ряду відповідних дисциплін) у профільних закладах вищої освіти України, країн Співдружності Незалежних Держав та Європейського Союзу дав змогу виявити різні підходи до формування техніко-тактичної підготовленості майбутніх тренерів зі спортивних єдиноборств, а також вказав на необхідність розроблення та упровадження у навчальний процес студентів тренажерних пристроїв, які відповідали б сучасним тенденціям розвитку спортивних єдиноборств. Результати: розроблено тренажерний пристрій «ТТТ-2», призначений для удосконалення та контролю техніко-тактичної підготовленості спротсменів-єдиноборців, які навчаються у профільних закладах вищої освіти. Пристрій складається з двох моніторів; двох комп’ютерних мишей; двох панелей з кнопкою для зупинки; електрофіксатора для реєстрації виконання завдань, обладнаного світловою та звуковою сигналізацією; цифрового забезпечення, на яке подається інформація щодо виконання завдань. Висновки. На підставі аналізу науково-методичної літератури встановлено, що техніко-тактична підготовленість є одним з найважливіших компонентів професійної підготовленості майбутніх тренерів зі спортивних єдиноборств. Для її формування найбільш перспективним вважається використання інтерактивних засобів. Розроблено тренажерний пристрій «ТТТ-2», головною перевагою якого є можливість розвитку не лише вмінь та навичок, необхідних у професійній діяльності майбутніх тренерів зі спортивних єдиноборств та їх вихованців, а й можливість отримання оперативного зворотного зв’язку між студентом та викладачем у реальному часі. Ключові слова: пристрій, техніко-тактична підготовленість, спортивні єдиноборства, майстерність, контроль.
... Auditory information could be more related to temporal and dynamic variables of the skill, which can hardly be inferred from visual information only, but which might be important in anticipation processes (i. e., reaction forces during contact with the environment, movement rhythm; Allerdissen, Güldenpenning, Schack, & Bläsing [8], Pizzera & Hohmann [9]). Second, utilizing and weighting visual and auditory information in the observation and the evaluation on gymnastics skills may depend on the role and experience of the observer as well as on his/her intentions (Jeraj, et al. [1], Pizzera, Möller, & Plessner [10]). ...
... Allerdissen et al. [8] investigated the role of auditory and visual information for action anticipation in fencing. Participant's task was to predict fencing attacks shown as video sequences in a temporal occlusion paradigm in three experimental conditions (visual information only, auditory information only, audio-visual information). ...
... Audio-based interventions have become a much debated topic in sport science approaches to enhance performance in a variety of domains (Sors et al., 2015). Specifically, auditory action-perception coupling as part of more general research on the role of natural movement sounds in sports has been studied across various sports domains including basketball (Camponogara et al., 2017), fencing (Allerdissen et al., 2017), elite rowing (Schaffert et al., 2011), ball sports (Sors et al., 2017(Sors et al., , 2018, and tennis (Cañal-Bruland et al., 2018). For example, auditory information can improve fencers' prediction of attack movements (Allerdissen et al., 2017), enhance the performance in hammer throwing (Agostini et al., 2004), or facilitate long-term storage of individual movement patterns in hurdling (Pizzera et al., 2017). ...
... Specifically, auditory action-perception coupling as part of more general research on the role of natural movement sounds in sports has been studied across various sports domains including basketball (Camponogara et al., 2017), fencing (Allerdissen et al., 2017), elite rowing (Schaffert et al., 2011), ball sports (Sors et al., 2017(Sors et al., , 2018, and tennis (Cañal-Bruland et al., 2018). For example, auditory information can improve fencers' prediction of attack movements (Allerdissen et al., 2017), enhance the performance in hammer throwing (Agostini et al., 2004), or facilitate long-term storage of individual movement patterns in hurdling (Pizzera et al., 2017). ...
Background: Music listening is wide-spread in amateur sports. Ergometer exercise is one such activity which is often performed with loud music.
Aim and Hypotheses: We investigated the effects of electronic music at different intensity levels on ergometer performance (physical performance, force on the pedal, pedaling frequency), perceived fatigue and heart rate in healthy adults. We assumed that higher sound intensity levels are associated with greater ergometer performance and less perceived effort, particularly for untrained individuals.
Methods: Groups of high trained and low trained healthy males (N = 40; age = 25.25 years; SD = 3.89 years) were tested individually on an ergometer while electronic dance music was played at 0, 65, 75, and 85 dB. Participants assessed their music experience during the experiment.
Results: Majorities of participants rated the music as not too loud (65%), motivating (77.50%), appropriate for this sports exercise (90%), and having the right tempo (67.50%). Participants noticed changes in the acoustical environment with increasing intensity levels, but no further effects on any of the physical or other subjective measures were found for neither of the groups. Therefore, the main hypothesis must be rejected.
Discussion: These findings suggest that high loudness levels do not positively influence ergometer performance. The high acceptance of loud music and perceived appropriateness could be based on erroneous beliefs or stereotypes. Reasons for the widespread use of loud music in fitness sports needs further investigation. Reducing loudness during fitness exercise may not compromise physical performance or perceived effort.
... Furthermore, advantages of high levels of expertise seem to be especially pronounced if audio-visual information has to be integrated -as was the case in the current study. For instance, Allerdissen et al. (2017) could show that in predicting fencing attacks from auditory, visual, or audio-visual information novices' performance su ered if audio-visual information had to be integrated under limited time (e.g., at early occlusion times). Considering this research, it might well be the case that results for high expertise samples di er from the current findings. ...
... Experts have more advanced mental representations of skills than novices [13], and skill level seems to influence how different task conditions affect performance [14]. Second, experts seem able to recruit motor areas of the brain when listening to action-related sounds [15], and efficiently exploit movement-related information from various stimuli [16]- [20]. They may thus react differently to auditory instructions than novices. ...
We report on an experiment in which nine Norwegian national team rowers (one female) were tested on a rowing ergometer in a motion capture lab. After the warm-up, all participants rowed in a neutral condition for three minutes, without any instructions. Then they rowed in two conditions (three minutes each), with a counterbalanced order: (1) a coaching condition, during which they received oral instructions from a national team coach, and (2) a sound condition, during which they listened to a pre-recorded sound file that was produced to promote good rowing technique. Performance was measured in terms of distance traveled, and subjective responses were measured via a questionnaire inquiring participants about how useful the two interventions were for rowing efficiency. The results showed no significant difference between the two conditions of main interest - the pre-recorded sound file and traditional coaching - on any measure. Our study indicates that auditory guidance can be a cost-efficient supplement to athletes’ training, even at higher levels.
... In different contexts, however, the influence of auditory information on perception has also been addressed. Especially in the context of anticipation (Allerdissen et al., 2017;Cañal-Bruland et al., 2018;Sors et al., 2018), motor control (Kennel et al., 2015;Pizzeria & Hohmann, 2015), agent discrimination Kennel, Pizzeria et al., 2014), gait behavior (Hildebrandt & Cañal-Bruland, 2021), the results of different studies could show that auditory information also plays an important role. However, the subject of the studies has mainly been movement sounds, or the sounds produced when, for example, a ball hits the playing equipment. ...
In technical compositional sports, such as gymnastics, judges' decisions regarding deductions for errors in an athlete's execution of complex skills lead to the final evaluation of the exercise shown. Different variables can become important in the context of decisions in sports, and consequently, various factors influence the judges’ performances. Therefore, the current study aims to investigate the influence of music on the evaluations of female gymnastics floor routines. Participants' task was to evaluate gymnastic series on the floor in three different conditions (audio-visual, beat-matched, and visual). The results show that the participants (22 judges and 22 laypeople) rated the executions of the gymnastic series in the beat-matched condition (unchanged video file and selected music) higher than in the audio-visual (unchanged video file and auditory information) and visual (unchanged video file and no auditory information) conditions. By the fact that performances in the beat-matched condition are rated the highest by the judges, one could conclude that it makes it worthwhile for the gymnasts to select their music so that the rhythmical structure coincides with the corresponding motor activity.
... As the current study provides evidence for skilled-based differences in the use of intrateam communication, future research should now look to incorporate visual information and other sources of auditory information to examine the relative contribution of various sources of sensory information to anticipation in sport. This multisensory approach has been taken in a few studies (i.e., Allerdissen et al., 2017;Gray, 2008;2009;Klatt & Smeeton, 2020), and it appears that athletes may employ Bayesian reliability-based strategies to integrate the various types of sensory information during anticipation (for a related review, see Gredin et al., 2020). More research is required to confirm this. ...
Verbal intrateam communication has been shown to be important for effective team sports performance. However, in the sports anticipation literature, there is a disparity between the vast body of work examining the use of visual information and the limited research investigating the use of auditory or verbal information. This study examines skill-based differences in athletes' use of intrateam communication to anticipate an opposing team's actions in the absence of visual information. Skilled and less-skilled lacrosse players acted as defenders in a laboratory-based experiment where only verbal information from simulated teammates was available. Participants used sequences of calls made during an unfolding action to respond to an end call and predict the actions of the opposing team. Independent sample t-tests revealed that skilled players had quicker decision times and movement times compared to less-skilled players (p's < .05). Findings demonstrate that information from teammate communication can be used for anticipation in sport.
... While vision is the dominating sensory system athletes perform in multisensory environments where also auditory information play a performance determining role (Schaffert et al., 2019). In this context, auditory information have been shown to improve discrimination of shot power in soccer or volleyball (Sors et al., 2017), to predict attacks in fencing (Allerdissen et al., 2017) and anticipate movement behavior in basketball (Camponogara et al., 2017). Moreover, auditory information contributed to movement performance in continuous repetitive movements such as rowing (Schaffert et al., 2020) and was used in acoustic reafference training to improve motor learning of a hurdling task (Pizzera et al., 2017). ...
Although vision is the dominating sensory system in sports, many situations require multisensory integration. Faster processing of auditory information in the brain may facilitate time-critical abilities such as reaction speed however previous research was limited by generic auditory and visual stimuli that did not consider audio-visual characteristics in ecologically valid environments. This study investigated the reaction speed in response to sport-specific monosensory (visual and auditory) and multisensory (audio-visual) stimulation. Neurophysiological analyses identified the neural processes contributing to differences in reaction speed. Nineteen elite badminton players participated in this study. In a first recording phase, the sound profile and shuttle speed of smash and drop strokes were identified on a badminton court using high-speed video cameras and binaural recordings. The speed and sound characteristics were transferred into auditory and visual stimuli and presented in a lab-based experiment, where participants reacted in response to sport-specific monosensory or multisensory stimulation. Auditory signal presentation was delayed by 26 ms to account for realistic audio-visual signal interaction on the court. N1 and N2 event-related potentials as indicators of auditory and visual information perception/processing, respectively were identified using a 64-channel EEG. Despite the 26 ms delay, auditory reactions were significantly faster than visual reactions (236.6 ms vs. 287.7 ms, p < 0.001) but still slower when compared to multisensory stimulation (224.4 ms, p = 0.002). Across conditions response times to smashes were faster when compared to drops (233.2 ms, 265.9 ms, p < 0.001). Faster reactions were paralleled by a lower latency and higher amplitude of the auditory N1 and visual N2 potentials. The results emphasize the potential of auditory information to accelerate the reaction time in sport-specific multisensory situations. This highlights auditory processes as a promising target for training interventions in racquet sports.
... Activation of AON regions has been observed in response to listening to a previously learned piano piece (Lahav et al., 2007) as well as the sounds of steps (Bidet-Caulet et al., 2005). Expertise studies have shown that athletes can recognize sport-specific actions from acoustic information only (Allerdissen et al., 2017;Klein-Soetebier et al., 2020), and that dancers can learn novel movement material from verbal description only (Bläsing et al., 2018). Evidence exists that in individuals who never had any visual experience, areas belonging to the AON are activated by hearing action sounds and while reasoning about mental states of others (Bedny et al., 2009;Ricciardi et al., 2009). ...
Dance is regarded as visual art form by common arts and science perspectives. Definitions of dance as means of communication agree that its message is conveyed by the dancer/choreographer via the human body for the observer, leaving no doubt that dance is performed to be watched. Brain activation elicited by the visual perception of dance has also become a topic of interest in cognitive neuroscience, with regards to action observation in the context of learning, expertise and aesthetics. The view that the aesthetic experience of dance is primarily a visual one is still shared by many artists and cultural institutions, yet there is growing interest in making dance performances accessible for individuals with visual impairment / blindness. Means of supporting the non-visual experience of dance include verbal (audio description), auditive (choreographed body sounds, movement sonification), and haptic (touch tour) techniques, applied for different purposes by artists and researchers, with three main objectives: to strengthen the cultural participation of a non-sighted audience in the cultural and aesthetic experience of dance; to expand the scope of dance as an artistic research laboratory toward novel ways of perceiving what dance can convey; and to inspire new lines of (neuro-cognitive) research beyond watching dance. Reviewing literature from different disciplines and drawing on the personal experience of an inclusive performance of Simon Mayer's “Sons of Sissy,” we argue that a non-exclusively visual approach can be enriching and promising for all three perspectives and conclude by proposing hypotheses for multidisciplinary lines of research.
... The use of auditory and visual (motor) information might be complementary and, therefore, advantageous in "noisy" (or competitive) settings as they may serve as mutual amplifiers. Athletes use complementary visual and auditory information to make domain-specific decisions in real-time (Allerdissen, Güldenpenning, Schack, & Bläsing, 2017;Klein-Soetebier, Noël, & Klatt, 2020). Evidence from research in birds suggests that facultative multimodal signaling may thwart eavesdropping by rivals (Smith, Taylor, & Evans, 2011). ...
Dance is ubiquitous among humans and has received attention from several disciplines. Ethnographic documentation suggests that dance has a signaling function in social interaction. It can influence mate preferences and facilitate social bonds. Research has provided insights into the proximate mechanisms of dance, individually or when dancing with partners or in groups. Here, we review dance research from an evolutionary perspective. We propose that human dance evolved from ordinary (non-communicative) movements to communicate socially relevant information accurately. The need for accurate social signaling may have accompanied increases in group size and population density. Because of its complexity in production and display, dance may have evolved as a vehicle for expressing social and cultural information. Mating-related qualities and motives may have been the predominant information derived from individual dance movements, whereas group dance offers the opportunity for the exchange of socially relevant content, for coordinating actions among group members, for signaling coalitional strength, and for stabilizing group structures. We conclude that, despite the cultural diversity in dance movements and contexts, the primary communicative functions of dance may be the same across societies.
... Particularly in laboratory studies, it is often neglected that decision making, especially in sports, can be controlled and influenced not only by visual but also by auditory stimuli. Only a small number of researchers have taken these interactions into account (e.g., Alaerts et al., 2009): a few laboratory studies have dealt with auditory and visual sensory perception in sport (e.g., Heinen et al., 2014;Sors et al., 2017), and some others have looked at differences between experts and novices (e.g., Allerdissen et al., 2017;Klatt & Smeeton, 2020). There are indications for auditory information contributing to the development of a mental representation of sport gestures, allowing experts to recognise their own movements (Kennel et al., 2014;Murgia et al., 2012) and to predict other athletes' actions (Camponogara et al., 2017;Cañal-Bruland et al., 2018;Müller et al., 2019). ...
Over the last decades, psychological research in sport has predominantly focused on the effects of visual stimulation on people’s anticipation and planning of action, whereas the effects of diverse auditory stimulation has not yet been analysed in detail. Thus, the current study investigated the effects of auditory signals in a first experiment and the perception (visual and auditory stimulation) in a second experiment using a representative sport-specific table tennis task with four conditions (forehand/backhand x with/without auditory perception). In Experiment 1, it was found that table tennis players are able to discriminate table tennis techniques based on their corresponding hitting sounds at better than chance level. The results in Experiment 2 showed that players perform better in a table tennis specific motor task in those conditions in which, in addition to visual information, auditory information was available, as compared to conditions without auditory information (i.e., when players wore headphones). This effect was found for both table tennis experts and novices. The results of both experiments indicate that auditory stimuli have an impact on athletes’ performances.
... Currently, it is not clear if multimodal sensory integration results in more accurate human performance. Allerdissen, Gueldenpenning, Schack, and Bläsing (2017) investigated the impact of visual and audible information for the prediction of attack movements in expert and nonexpert fencers. The authors found that nonfencers provided with audiovisual information made more accurate decisions than with visual information alone. ...
In 2 experiments, the authors investigated the effects of bimodal integration in a sport-specific task. Beach volleyball players were required to make a tactical decision, responding either verbally or via a motor response, after being presented with visual, auditory, or both kinds of stimuli in a beach volleyball scenario. In Experiment 1, players made the correct decision in a game situation more often when visual and auditory information were congruent than in trials in which they experienced only one of the modalities or incongruent information. Decision-making accuracy was greater when motor, rather than verbal, responses were given. Experiment 2 replicated this congruence effect using different stimulus material and showed a decreasing effect of visual stimulation on decision making as a function of shorter visual stimulus durations. In conclusion, this study shows that bimodal integration of congruent visual and auditory information results in more accurate decision making in sport than unimodal information.
... In recent years, various studies investigated auditory information in complex movements, in terms of how sounds can affect movement execution (e.g., Thaut et al., 2015;Pizzera et al., 2017;Bailey et al., 2018;Murgia et al., 2018) and of how biological motion perception is affected by sounds (e.g., Allerdissen et al., 2017;Camponogara et al., 2017;Murgia et al., 2017;Sors et al., 2018). In our Research Topic, we include several contributions both on perception and motor execution, using in some cases purely auditory stimuli or combining/comparing auditory and visual stimuli. ...
Murgia et al. Perceptual Information in Complex Movements
AUDITORY INFORMATION IN SPORT,
EXERCISE AND REHABILITATION
The first contribution of this section is a review by Schaffert
et al., describing the mutual influences between complex
movement and sound. The authors critically analyze the
studies on ecological sounds and movement sonification
in sports and those on rhythmic auditory information and
sonification in rehabilitation. The next two contributions
address two methodological issues. The contribution by
Schmitz et al. proposes a new method based on movement
sonification for the rehabilitation of patients with stroke. In
particular, the authors contribute a “Clinical study protocol
article,” describing a protocol that provides auditory real-time
feedback on upper limb movement, aimed at helping patients
participating to a motor rehabilitation program after stroke.
The work by Ghiselli et al. illustrates three clinical cases of
children with congenital hearing impairment engaged in
non-instrumental musical training. The authors describe this
training and its effects on cognitive and motor skills, discussing
the preliminary evidence of this method and its potential
clinical relevance.
The last two contributions of this section are original
research articles. The study by Ghai et al. investigates the
effects of auditory feedback in real-time to facilitate knee
proprioception. The authors provide empirical evidence that
the use of auditory feedback improves the accuracy of knee
re-positioning and that this effect can be modulated with
step-wise transposition of frequency. The authors discuss the
potential applications of their finding in rehabilitation settings.
Conversely, the last work of this section—by Kreutz et al.—
concerns the effects of loud music in sports, and in particular
on ergometer exercise. The authors investigate the effects of
electronicmusic,manipulating the intensity levels, and evaluated
the ergometer performance, the perceived fatigue and the heart
rate in university students with relatively high and low levels
of training.
AUDITORY AND VISUAL INFORMATION IN
MOTOR LEARNING AND IMAGERY
This section includes those contributions examining the effects
of auditory and visual cues (either compared or combined)
on movement or imagery. The study by Bienkiewicz et al.
investigates whether auditory and visual cues regarding the
kinematic of experts can enhance motor learning in golf,
demonstrating that both auditory and visual cues can be
beneficial for novices. Bläsing et al. focus on motor learning in
dance. They compare visual cues and verbal instructions and
show that the latter are more effective than the former, when
learning dance movements. Finally, Yu et al. investigate the
lower limb imagery alone or combined with visual or audiovisual
stimuli, using neurophysiological measures. They find that the
visual-auditory stimuli produce the most valuable effects, with
important implications for motor learning and rehabilitation.
VISUAL INFORMATION AND MOTOR
EXPERTISE
This section starts with the contribution by Kurz and Munzert,
who present a mini review on football penalty takers and
eye movements. In particular, they analyze how experimental
artificial conditions influence gaze behavior. The second
contribution of this section is an original study by Vickers
et al.. The authors investigated the role of quiet eye in
basketball, and in particular they focused on the timing
and the location of fixations, and on the effect of the defender on
performance, in three-point shots. The next contribution—by
Jackson et al.—further analyzes the role of visual perception in
football. In this case, the authors used the spatial and temporal
occlusion paradigms to investigate the ability to discriminate
between genuine and deceptive actions, and examined the
sensitivity to different sources of visual information of
the opponent.
The third article of this section is by Bläsing and Sauzet
and investigates the perception of action in the domain of
dance. In particular, the authors analyze the participants’
ability to recognize point-light displays of dance-like actions,
previously performed by the same participants. The next
article is by Marchal-Crespo et al. and deals with different
training strategies to enhance motor learning. In their work,
the authors focus on the learning process of a modified
gait pattern, and compared the haptic error modulation and
the visual error amplification strategies. Finally, this section
ends with the contribution by Castañer et al., who study
the laterality profile and the approach of young athletes
on a novel perceptual-motor situation. In particular, they
examine how the athletes use the limbs and investigated their
spatial orientation.
INTERPERSONAL COORDINATION AND
SENSORY INFORMATION
The last section of this special issue is dedicated to original
studies on interpersonal coordination, interactions among actors,
and perception of others’ point of view. The first contribution
of this section is by Hwang et al., who examine the social
coupling between two individuals in a collaborative task. They
manipulate the perceptual information available, by combining
visual information with different types of auditory feedback. The
next study by van Opstal et al. focuses on the investigation of
interception, using a doubles-pong task. In particular, the authors
study how teams intercept approaching balls, when teams are
composed of two different level players. The third study of this
section is by Meerhoff et al., who focus on collision avoidance.
In their study, the authors examine the strategies of dyadic
avoidance compared to triadic avoidance, and how locomotor
interactions are influenced by the dynamics of a passable gap
between two walkers. Finally, the last contribution of this section
(and of the entire article collection) is by Cook et al.. In this
study, the authors investigate how naturally produced virtual
motion can affect postural regulation. Moreover, they study the
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 2 November 2019 | Volume 10 | Article 2696
Murgia et al. Perceptual Information in Complex Movements
response to different types of optical flow, which was produced
by other individuals.
FINAL REMARKS
As editors, we are fully satisfied with this collection of articles
and are convinced that most of them will have a high impact
on research in this field.We hope that these works will stimulate
new ideas, and contribute to the development of research on the
mutual influences between auditory and visual perception and
complex movements.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
MM, TA, and PM contributed equally to the development of
the outline of this editorial. MM wrote the first draft, which was
revised and edited by TA and PM. All the authors approved the
final version of the manuscript.
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potential conflict of interest.
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... Interestingly, the present study significantly adds not only to the literature concerning referees' decision making, but also to the line of research that in recent years is revealing the relevant role of ecological sounds in sports (for a recent review, see Schaffert et al., 2019). Indeed, previous studies highlighted that ecological auditory information can be used by athletes to perceive different features of sport gestures (Murgia et al., 2012;Kennel et al., 2014;Sors et al., 2017), to predict the outcome of opponents' actions (Allerdissen et al., 2017;Camponogara et al., 2017;Cañal-Bruland et al., 2018;Sors et al., 2018), and to improve performances (Agostini et al., 2004;Sors et al., 2015;Pizzera et al., 2017). The present study indicates that the ecological auditory information is somehow important not only for athletes, but also for referees, as it provides them with an additional source of information. ...
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 referees, when examining videos of potential fouls. In doing so, we also considered the level of competitive anxiety of referees (low vs. high anxiety), as factor potentially interacting with the pressure exerted by the spectators. A 2 × 2 ANOVA (Crowd noise x Anxiety) revealed a significant interaction [F(1,28) = 7.33; p < 0.05; ηp2 = 0.21; power = 0.74], with the highly anxious referees showing poorer performances in the pressing crowd condition [t(14) = 2.24; p < 0.05; d = 0.64]. The results indicate that the crowd noise does not seem to affect the referees' decisions, unless we consider the anxiety. The present findings suggest that the decisions of referees with high anxiety might be more easily influenced by external factors like crowd noise. Based on these results, referees' federations should consider the possibility to develop training protocols dedicated to highly anxious referees, to avoid their decisions from being biased by spectators' pressure.
... На думку багатьох авторів [2,[4][5][6], акцент при цьому слід робити на розширенні арсеналу дій та удосконаленні тих фізичних якостей, які дозволяють максимально ефективно виконувати техніко-тактичні дії в умовах тренувальної та змагальної діяльності. Вирішення цього завдання фахівці з різних видів спортивних єдиноборств вбачають у розробці та експериментальній перевірці ефективності інноваційних засобів та методів тактичної підготовки [4,[7][8][9]. При цьому у більшості наукових публікацій та нормативно-правових документів (програми для ДЮСШ, СДЮШОР, ШВСМ та спеціалізованих навчальних закладів спортивного профілю) реалізацію тактичної підготовки на усіх етапах багаторічного удосконалення заплановано у поєднанні з технічною [10][11][12][13]. Проте, якщо алгоритм реалізації технічної підготовки є чітким та структурованим, тактична підготовка здебільшого описана фрагментарно [2][3][4][5][6]. ...
... As such, the main concern for jumpers is to agree on the degree of compensation required to help them maintain their timing. 12 This aligns with recent work in sport science that emphasizes the role of auditory feedback in optimizing performance (e.g., using sounds to detect an opponent's intention) (see Allerdissen et al., 2017;Camponogara et al., 2017;Sors et al., 2017Sors et al., , 2018. describes the intense feeling of watching his mentor Jimmy Rowles performing on stage as follows: ...
Embodied approaches to cognition conceive of mental life as emerging from the ongoing relationship between neural and extra-neural resources. The latter include, first and foremost, our entire body, but also the activity patterns enacted within a contingent milieu, cultural norms, social factors, and the features of the environment that can be used to enhance our cognitive capacities (e.g., tools, devices, etc.). Recent work in music education and sport psychology has applied general principles of embodiment to a number of social contexts relevant to their respective fields. In particular, both disciplines have contributed fascinating perspectives to our understanding of how skills are acquired and developed in groups; how musicians, athletes, teachers, and coaches experience their interactions; and how empathy and social action participate in shaping effective performance. In this paper, we aim to provide additional grounding for this research by comparing and further developing original themes emerging from this cross-disciplinary literature and empirical works on how performative skills are acquired and optimized. In doing so, our discussion will focus on: (1) the feeling of being together, as meaningfully enacted in collective musical and sport events; (2) the capacity to skillfully adapt to the contextual demands arising from the social environment; and (3) the development of distributed forms of bodily memory. These categories will be discussed from the perspective of embodied cognitive science and with regard to their relevance for music education and sport psychology. It is argued that because they play a key role in the acquisition and development of relevant skills, they can offer important tools to help teachers and coaches develop novel strategies to enhance learning and foster new conceptual and practical research in the domains of music and sport.
... Additionally, auditory information may be used to improve performance [4][5][6] (see [7], for a review). Finally, auditory information has been shown to influence anticipation as well [8,9]. ...
Grunting in tennis is a widespread phenomenon and whether it influences opponents’ predictions of ball trajectory—and if so, why—is subject of ongoing debate. Two alternative hypotheses have been proposed to explain why grunting may impede opponents’ predictions, referred to as the distraction account (i.e., grunts capture attentional resources necessary for anticipation) and the multisensory integration account (i.e., auditory information from the grunt systematically influences ball trajectory prediction typically assumed to rely on visual information). To put these competing hypotheses to test, in the current study we presented tennis players with a series of temporally occluded video clips of tennis rallies featuring experimentally amplified, attenuated, or muted grunting sounds. Participants were asked to predict the ball landing position. Results indicated that higher grunt intensities yielded judgments of longer ball trajectories whereas radial prediction errors were not affected. These results are clearly at odds with the distraction account of grunting, predicting increased prediction errors after higher intensity grunts. In contrast, our findings provide strong support for the multisensory integration account by demonstrating that grunt intensity systematically influences judgments of ball trajectory.
... Even though the majority of studies supports the view that physical execution results in better learning than mere observation, evidence against such an enactment effect has also been found, in particular for complex "real-world" type tasks involving longer action sequences (von Stülpnagel et al., 2016a,b). Findings by Allerdissen et al. (2017) suggest that it might not be the mere redundancy of information that enhances learning success in multimodal conditions, but rather the contribution of different modalities providing slightly different information that is then integrated in a meaningful way, and that the ability to integrate relevant information into a consistent action representation and omit irrelevant or contradictory information can be considered a feature of domain-specific expertise. Plenty of evidence exists that auditory information is more accurate than vision with regards to temporal action features and that action control therefore relies more strongly on sound if timing, speed, or rhythm is crucial (e.g., Repp and Penel, 2002), which is of particular relevance in sports (Camponogara et al., 2017;Sors et al., 2017). ...
Previous research has shown that motor experience of an action can facilitate the visual recognition of that action, even in the absence of visual experience. We conducted an experiment in which participants were presented point-light displays of dance-like actions that had been recorded with the same group of participants during a previous session. The stimuli had been produced with the participant in such a way that each participant experienced a subset of phrases only as observer, learnt two phrases from observation, and created one phrase while blindfolded. The clips presented in the recognition task showed movements that were either unfamiliar, only visually familiar, familiar from observational learning and execution, or self-created while blind-folded (and hence not visually familiar). Participants assigned all types of movements correctly to the respective categories, showing that all three ways of experiencing the movement (observed, learnt through observation and practice, and created blindfolded) resulted in an encoding that was adequate for recognition. Observed movements showed the lowest level of recognition accuracy, whereas the accuracy of assigning blindfolded self-created movements was on the same level as for unfamiliar and learnt movements. Self-recognition was modulated by action recognition, as participants were more likely to identify themselves as the actor in clips they had assigned to the category “created” than in clips they had assigned to the category “learnt,” supporting the idea of an influence of agency on self-recognition.
... 16,48 On the other hand, there exists further research with differing findings as presented by Sors et al.: 49 Although early auditory information was supportive for the prediction of visual ball motion of volleyball smashes, for the prediction of the visual ball motion of soccer penalties, additional early auditory information was not more effective. Furthermore, Allerdissen et al. 50 did not report any effects of additional auditory information on the prediction of attack movements in fencing. ...
Many domains of human behavior are based on multisensory representations. Knowledge about the principles of multisensory integration is useful to configure real‐time movement information for the online support of perceptuomotor processes (motor perception, control, and learning). A powerful method for generating real‐time information is movement sonification. Remarkable evidence exists on movement‐acoustic real‐time information being effective in behavioral domains (music training, motor rehabilitation, sports). Here, we investigate whether and how biological motion perception can be enhanced, substituted, or modulated by kinematic sonification, with a focus on pitch coding. We work with gross motor cyclic movements and investigate the effectiveness of pitch scaling and consistent transposition on audiovisual motor perception accuracy (Experiment A). Beyond that, a new kind of audiovisual stimulus with inconsistent pitch transposition is used to produce a directed modulation of the integrated audiovisual percept (Experiment B). Results from Experiment A indicate pitch being powerful for mediating kinematic information to enhance motor perception and substituting information between perceptual modalities, even exceeding visual performance. Beyond these findings, results from Experiment B indicate that visual estimations of movement velocity can be enhanced or reduced auditorily. Movement sonification used for reshaping intermodal adjustments should be a powerful new tool for subconsciously shaping human movement patterns in the future. Many domains of human behavior are based on multisensory representations. Knowledge about the principles of multisensory integration is useful to configure real‐time movement information for the online support of perceptuomotor processes. Here, we investigate whether and how biological motion perception can be enhanced, substituted, or modulated by kinematic sonification, with a focus on pitch coding.
... Fast reaction, suitable and timely executed movements during the match (Allerdissen et al., 2017;Borysiuk & Waskiewicz, 2008) in optimal distance from an opponent, technical and tactical skills (Kriventsova et al., 2017), optimal psychological mood, physical fitness (Chan et al., 2011) represent elementary determinants necessary for the overall performance of a fencer. Other authors mention the importance of lunge velocity and change of direction speed for overall fencing performance during fencing competitions (Turner et al., 2016). ...
The present work studied potential differences in activation times of selected muscles associated with the motor responses of the armed arm and differences in selected muscle pairs activation during the fencing lunge. Twenty-eight fencers (epée fencers, aged 23.1 ± 5.4 years) grouped into elite and beginning skill levels, participated in this study. Surface electromyography was used to determine muscle activation time (time period measured from visual stimulus occurrence to the moment of muscle activation threshold detection). For motor response, we measured the time between visual stimulus occurrence and armed arm movement. A significant difference was found between elite and beginning fencers in the motor response of the armed arm. Detection of armed arm's motor response was significantly later in beginners. Greater time disparities between arm's motor response and muscle activation time of the m. rectus femoris on the front/lunge side was also found in beginners. Lastly, difference was detected between elite and beginning fencers regarding the muscle activation time of selected muscle pairs. Future studies and trainers can use these results to further explore key areas of motor control and biomechanics for improving of fencing performance.
Contrasted to ‘visualization’, the term ‘sonification’ refers to an acoustic transformation of data into sound. Human movement sonification based on kinematic and dynamic data offers multifaceted innovative applications in sports concerning enhancement in motor-perception, motor control and motor learning, mainly referring to closed skills. With the transformation of originally visual information into the auditory domain the specific power of the auditory and musical perceptual system will be integrated comprehensively into behavioral regulation. Particularly, real-time movement sonification can get effectively in novel ways, if configured convergently to visual or kinesthetic information: It has been shown that, seamlessly integrated with information from other perceptual modalities, it modulates and enhances perceptual-, control-, and even learning-processes—not only individually, but also interpersonally.
The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of mindfulness and Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) on psychological factors such as injury anxiety and performance improvement. There are models of the relationship between psychological factors and injury showing that stress, anxiety and worry can limit cognition, increase muscle tension, increase distractibility and lose focus. Finding a way to reduce anxiety and improve performance is important for professional athletes. This study was conducted in the form of an experiment involving two experimental groups (mindfulness training group and electrostimulation group) and a control group with a pretest-posttest design. The statistical sample of this study consists of 36 volunteers who participated in this study. The statistical population of this study was all elite fencers who had at least third place in Tehran province in their record. Anxiety inventory questionnaire prepared by Cassidy (2006) and sports performance questionnaire prepared by Charbonio (2001) were used to measure injury anxiety and performance. Data were measured with descriptive statistics to show the mean and standard deviation of the data, and inferential statistical tests through paired t-tests and Fisher's tests to show the differences between groups, using SPSS software. The results showed that mindfulness and Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) had a significant effect on the pretest in both performance and anxiety variables by paired t-tests. By Fisher's test, the variables of injury anxiety in the two groups of mindfulness and Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) showed no significant difference. In this study, it can be concluded that both mindfulness and Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation had a significant effect on these variables and that mindfulness is a suitable, inexpensive and accessible way for athletes to access it.
The ability to perceive and produce a beat is believed to be universal in humans, but individual ability varies. The current study examined four factors that may influence beat perception and production capacity: 1) expertise: music or dance, 2) training style: percussive or nonpercussive, 3) stimulus modality: auditory or visual, and 4) movement type: finger-tap or whole-body bounce. Experiment 1 examined how expertise and training style influenced beat perception and production performance using an auditory beat perception task and a finger-tapping beat production task. Experiment 2 used a similar sample with an audiovisual variant of the beat perception task, and a standing knee-bend (bounce) beat production task to assess whole-body movement. The data showed that: 1) musicians were more accurate in a finger-tapping beat synchronization task compared to dancers and controls, 2) training style did not significantly influence beat perception and production, 3) visual beat information did not benefit any group, and 4) beat synchronization in a full-body movement task was comparable for musicians and dancers; both groups outperformed controls. The current study suggests that the type of task and measured response interacts with expertise, and that expertise effects may be masked by selection of nonoptimal response types.
In the current study, we conducted two experiments to investigate the impact of concurrent, action-induced auditory feedback on gait patterns, gaze behavior and outcome performance in long jumping. In Experiment 1, we examined the effects of present vs. absent auditory feedback on gait, gaze and performance outcome measures. Results revealed a significant interaction effect between condition (present vs. absent auditory feedback) and phase (acceleration vs. zeroing-in phase) on participants' step lengths indicating that the absence (rather than the presence) of auditory feedback led to facilitatory effects in terms of a more prototypical gait pattern (i.e., shorter steps in the acceleration phase and longer steps in the zeroing-in phase). Similarly, the absent auditory feedback led to a higher gaze stability in terms of less switches between areas of interest (AOIs). However, there was no effect on jumped distance. In Experiment 2, we scrutinized the influence of concurrent vs. delayed auditory feedback on all three performance parameters. In contrast to concurrent feedback, delayed auditory feedback negatively affected all three measures: participants showed (i) dysfunctional deviations from their prototypical gait pattern (i.e., shorter steps across both phases of the run-up), (ii) less stable, maladaptive gaze patterns (i.e., more switches between AOIs) and (iii) poorer jumping performance (i.e., shorter jumped distances). Together, the two experiments provide clear evidence for the impact of concurrent, action-induced auditory feedback on the coordination of complex, rhythmical motor tasks such as the long jump.
The article is devoted to the theoretical and methodological substantiation of tactics in modern Olympic martial arts. The urgency of the work is due to the needs of the training system of athletes and the mandatory practice of organizing and conducting specialized activities to achieve results in specific conflict situations, taking into account current trends in Olympic martial arts. The purpose of the research is theoretical and methodological substantiation of tactics in modern Olympic martial arts. Methods: theoretical analysis and generalization, study of documentary materials, sociological survey methods (expert assessment), ascertaining pedagogical experiment, methods of mathematical statistics. Results. Tactics in modern Olympic martial arts should be considered as a system that covers the theory and practice of organizing and conducting special activities of the subjects of the personalized subsystem of the training system, the main purpose of which is to achieve sports results by using various schemes and tools according to certain rules. specific sport, and current environmental conditions. The springboard, or the most important starting position, which dictates the nature of special activities (tactics) are the current trends in the development of Olympic martial arts. At each of the seven levels, tactics are implemented in the following areas: perception of the environment and search for information needed to understand the situation, analysis of information and its comparison with previous experience and purpose, selection and decision-making, implementation of decisions and evaluation. Conclusions. The concept of tactics in modern Olympic martial arts is a system of views on it as a multilevel and multidimensional phenomenon that exists in several areas - competitive and non-competitive activities. The levels of implementation of tactics are as follows: tactical interaction (during the technical reception); duel; team meeting; tournament and its stages; competition systems - during the season, the Olympic cycle and their totality. At each of the seven levels, tactics are implemented in the following areas: perception of the environment and search for information needed to understand the situation, analysis of information and its comparison with previous experience and purpose, selection and decision-making, implementation of decisions and evaluation
The relevance of the research is that current trends in the development of Olympic combat sports require a constant search for ways to improve the tactical skills of athletes of different ages and qualifications. The purpose of the study is to identify and characterize the technologies of tactical training in modern combat sports. Research methods and material. Theoretical analysis, documentary method, generalization of literature data and the Internet allowed us to identify the problematic field of tactical training in martial arts and formulate a research hypothesis. Later, an expert assessment was conducted with the involvement of forty experts in modern Olympic combat sports to determine their attitude to the implementation of tactical training of athletes at various stages of long-term improvement. The generalization of the experts' answers allowed us to determine the tactical training technologies used in the training process of athletes of different experience. Research results. Technologies of tactical training of athletes that can be applied at different levels (general pedagogical, stage and local) have been identified. The most sought after in modern Olympic martial arts is pattern technology with elements of modification using a variety of tools – 55.00% of experts (n=40) supported its use. Other technologies are applied by a narrower circle of specialists: variant, with various tools – 30.00% of specialists; template with modification elements with limited range of tools – 7.50%; template, without modification, with limited range of tools – 2.50%; template-variant, with various tools – 5.00%. Conclusions. The universal technology of athletes’ tactical training, relevant for modern martial arts, is a template with modifying elements, which provides the use of various tools. Other technologies (variable, template without modification, template and variable) are in demand for a narrow circle of specialists. Keywords: combat sports, tactics, skills, stages, methods.
This analysis aims to identify the specialist cognitive skills used in recreational surfing, and the time scales at which they operate. It employs participant observation from 2000 h surfing over 20 years, including 5000 waves ridden and 500,000 waves observed. It shows that cognitive components of surfing skills operate at timescales from days down to sub-seconds. Cognitive skills are learned through repeated observation and practice, at all timescales. Longer timescales allow for reconsideration of individual action decisions; shorter timescales do not. Practice improves the ability to anticipate outcomes, even at very short timescales. At sub-second timescales, skilled practitioners achieve self-perceived subjective time dilation, which permits awareness of attention, actions, and decisions even during high-speed, physically skilled and practiced manoeuvres. That is, features of brain operation generally associated with “slow” cognition, persist even at short timescales generally associated with “fast” autonomic physical motor control. Qualitative analysis of the psychology of surfing and similar adventurous outdoor nature sports can thus make a significant contribution to broader understanding of human brain function and evolution.
Management implications
Surfing itself in not a heavily managed activity. Most surfing sites are open access and it is up to the individual surfers to judge the respective safety and possible risks. It is only in organized surf schools and guided surf tours where expert instructors assess the skills and show the surfer how to manage their education and safety. From a training perspective, this study sets out the range of different types of knowledge and skills that a successful surfer must acquire.
BACKGROUND: It has been frequently evidenced that skilled sport performers distinguish themselves from less-skilled based on key temporally constrained perceptual cues in order to anticipate future events. However, the evidence to-date has arguably failed to reflect the true nature of perceptual-cognitive skill in sport, and thus negated any robust suggestions for the assessment and training of athletes. The present study attempts to address this issue by observing measures of anticipation within purely naturalistic match-play.
METHODS: A series of skilled (n=8) and less-skilled (n=8) badminton players undertook regular match-play while an equal number of digital recordings were made of their return-of-serve (n=10). Frame-by-frame analyses were conducted to indicate the moment of initiation and accuracy of initial response selection.
RESULTS: Inter-observer agreement for time (r = .70, p < .00) and accuracy (90.63%) measures were robust. Performance differences between the groups were stark including significant differences for time (Mdn: skilled = 184 ms; less-skilled = 322 ms) and accuracy (Mdn: skilled = 9; less-skilled = 6) (ps < .00).
CONCLUSION: Influence of skill level corresponds with empirically derived suggestions of skilled athletes accessing domain-specific knowledge for the anticipation of future events. Thus, the naturalistic performance setting offers a viable alternative for further examination, while additionally incorporating the invariant features and contextual information that underlie sport performance.
Sounds offer a rich source of information about events taking place in our physical and social environment. However, outside the domains of speech and music, little is known about whether humans can recognize and act upon the intentions of another agent’s actions detected through auditory information alone. In this study we assessed whether intention can be inferred from the sound an action makes, and in turn, whether this information can be used to prospectively guide movement. In 2 experiments experienced and novice basketball players had to virtually intercept an attacker by listening to audio recordings of that player’s movements. In the first experiment participants had to move a slider, while in the second one their body, to block the perceived passage of the attacker as they would in a real basketball game. Combinations of deceptive and nondeceptive movements were used to see if novice and/or experienced listeners could perceive the attacker’s intentions through sound alone. We showed that basketball players were able to more accurately predict final running direction compared to nonplayers, particularly in the second experiment when the interceptive action was more basketball specific. We suggest that athletes present better action anticipation by being able to pick up and use the relevant kinematic features of deceptive movement from event-related sounds alone. This result suggests that action intention can be perceived through the sound a movement makes and that the ability to determine another person’s action intention from the information conveyed through sound is honed through practice.
We experimentally studied the role of the auditory information, and its potential implications to enhance the performance in hammer throwing. We stimulated our athletes auditory by using the rhythmic sound (produced by the impact between the hammer and the air) associated to the best personal throw. The results are coherent with literature claiming that auditory information is an essential factor to guide motor action in sport activities. In fact, all the tested athletes both metrically improved and standardized their performance. This kind of suggestions, merging from applied studies in sport activities, offers important indications to develop cognitive models about mental strategies in sport.
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 potential of audio-based interventions in sport. The relevant concepts are defined, a brief overview of the techniques based on vision is given and laboratory studies demonstrating the effectiveness of sounds in improving the execution of simple rhythmic motor tasks are reviewed. Subsequently, neurophysiological evidence of the influence of sounds on the motor regions of the brain is provided and different kinds of audio-based interventions, emphasising their methodological details and the effects of their application to specific sporting performances are described. Finally, recommendations for further research in this field, aimed both at maximizing the potential of audio-based interventions and their implementation at applied sporting contexts, are suggested.
“Perception and action” is one of the main research fields in which experimental psychologists work together with experts of other disciplines, such as medicine, physiotherapy, engineering, and sport. Traditionally, researchers have mainly focused on visual perception and on its influences on motor processes, while less attention has been dedicated to the role of auditory perception. However, in the last decade, the interest towards the influence of sounds on both action perception and motor execution has increased significantly. On the one hand, researchers have been interested in determining how humans can represent motor actions through the sounds associated with movements, as well as which auditory cues are salient for recognizing and discriminating different features of movement [1-10]. On the other hand, researchers have studied how auditory stimuli affect the production of complex movements in different domains [11-21]. The general aim of this special issue is to provide an overview of the relationship between sounds and movements by addressing theoretical, methodological, and applied issues from a multidisciplinary perspective.
ORGANIZATION OF THE VOLUME
At the beginning of this special issue we report the contributions that deal with theoretical (Steenson & Rodger; Pizzera & Hohmann) and methodological (Dyer, Stapleton & Rodger) issues regarding auditory perception and action. After providing a theoretical and methodological background, we report those contributions that focus on possible applications of auditory training in the domain of sport and exercise psychology (O, Law & Rymal; Sors, Murgia, Santoro & Agostini), rehabilitation (Murgia, Corona, Pili, Sors, Agostini, Casula, Pau & Guicciardi), and motor learning (Effenberg, Schmitz, Baumann, Rosenhahn & Kroeger).
In the first article, Steenson and Rodger highlight that despite the fact that sounds are helpful in executing many dayto- day and context-specific movements and skills in everyday life, there is a surprising lack of exploration of this topic in psychological studies. In fact, the authors review the auditory perception literature and note that auditory perception theories mainly describe the rules governing the processing and representation of sounds in memory, and largely disregard the meaning that sounds have to individuals engaged in movement and the subsequent use of movement sounds in movement priming and execution. Steenson and Rodger’s work can be framed in the context of Gibson’s ecological psychology, as they emphasize the role of sound as a very important affordance that we use to interact with our environment.
In the second contribution, Pizzera and Hohmann extensively review studies that address the relevance of the mutual interactions between perception and motor control. Again, these authors highlight the scarcity of research on acoustic information, especially when comparing it with the amount of evidence available in the visual domain. Pizzera and Hohmann offer their perspective on the role of auditory information in controlling and integrating the perception and action cycle. The authors present both behavioral and neurophysiological evidence in support of the importance of auditory information in perception and action, and propose valuable suggestions that future investigators should consider in order to advance the state of knowledge in this domain.
The methodological contribution of Dyer, Stapleton and Rodger highlights the feasibility of movement sonification as an effective feedback tool for enhancing motor skill learning and performance, particularly in novices. The authors critically discuss the strengths and weaknesses of movement sonification in the context of providing efficient perceptual feedback information to learners. Dyer, Stapleton and Rodger conclude that a well-defined framework for sonification mapping has yet to be established and that there is still need for controlled trials in motor learning. However, the authors do suggest that new technologies relevant to movement sound recording, mapping, and sonification are available to researchers and can facilitate meaningful and much-needed future research on this promising perceptual feedback method.
With regards to the possible applications of audio-based interventions, the fourth article of the issue by O, Law, and Rymal provides an overview of imagery and modeling research in sport psychology and motor learning, documenting evidence supporting the cognitive processing similarities between imagery and modeling. Within this background, the authors critically examine the role of the auditory sense in modeling and imagery, analyzing both theoretical issues and empirical evidence. From a bio-informational theory perspective, O, Law, and Rymal offer several examples of potential applications of the deliberate integration of the auditory sense in movement teaching and instruction, but also offer a strong caveat regarding the severe lack of applied research on the auditory sense focused on sport populations, especially in the domain of imagery. In their conclusions the authors propose detailed recommendations for future research.
A second contribution on audio-based interventions in sports is provided by Sors, Murgia, Santoro and Agostini. The authors extensively define the concepts of augmented feedback and modeling, and review studies demonstrating the effectiveness of sounds in improving the execution of simple rhythmic motor tasks. Then, Sors and colleagues describe both a theoretical background and neurophysiological evidence illustrating the mechanisms that are possibly influenced by audio-based interventions. Finally, they provide a complete description of the literature on auditory modeling and auditory augmented feedback in sports, specifying the methodological details of previous studies and proposing future directions for both, application and research.
In the sixth article, Murgia, Corona, Pili, Sors, Agostini, Casula, Pau and Guicciardi illustrate the perceptual-motor impairments of patients affected by Parkinsons’ disease and new frontiers in assessment and interventions. They extensively review the empirical evidence concerning the Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation (RAS) method, describing the mechanisms underpinning its effectiveness. The authors propose possible methods for integrating auditory cues into physical therapy interventions as well as assessments. Last, Murgia and colleagues describe the biomechanical advantages of three-dimensional quantitative gait analysis, and discuss the potential impact of the incorporation of ecological footstep sounds in the modulation of patients’ gait.
In the seventh and last contribution of this special issue, Effenberg, Schmitz, Baumann, Rosenhahn and Kroeger present a new method based on sonification called “Sound- Script”, which is aimed to facilitate the acquisition of writing. This method consists of the sonification of handwriting, that is, the conversion of physical parameters (i.e., position of the pen, pressure) into movement sounds, which provides children with auditory information which correlates with visual information of their handwriting performance. The authors report pilot data, showing that the multisensory integration elicited by SoundScript leads to a more adequate reproduction of writing kinematics. Effenberg and colleagues conclude by highlighting the potential of this new method and suggesting future steps for research.
In sum, we hope that the papers presented in this special issue constitute a useful reference for movement researchers in the field of auditory perception and action, as well as for practitioners in the domains of sport, rehabilitation, and motor learning.
We live in a richly structured auditory environment. From the sounds of cars charging towards us on the street to the sounds of music filling a dancehall, sounds like these are generally seen as being instances of things we hear but can also be understood as opportunities for action. In some circumstances, the sound of a car approaching towards us can provide critical information for the avoidance of harm. In the context of a concert venue, sociocultural practices like music can equally afford coordinated activities of movement, such as dancing or music making. Despite how evident the behavioral effects of sound are in our everyday experience, they have been sparsely accounted for within the field of psychology. Instead, most theories of auditory perception have been more concerned with understanding how sounds are passively processed and represented or how they convey information of world, neglecting how this information can be used for anything. Here, we argue against these previous rationalizations, suggesting instead that information is instantiated through use and, therefore, is an emergent effect of a perceiver’s interaction with their environment. Drawing on theory from psychology, philosophy and anthropology, we contend that by thinking of sounds as materials, theorists and researchers alike can get to grips with the vast array of auditory affordances that we purposefully bring into use when interacting with the environment.
In indoor rock climbing, the perception of object properties and the adequate execution of grasping actions highly determine climbers' performance. In two consecutive experiments, effects of climbing expertise on the cognitive activation of grasping actions following the presentation of climbing holds was investigated. Experiment 1 evaluated the representation of climbing holds in the long-term memory of climbers and non-climbers with the help of a psychometric measurement method. Within a hierarchical splitting procedure subjects had to decide about the similarity of required grasping postures. For the group of climbers, representation structures corresponded clearly to four grip types. In the group of non-climbers, representation structures differed more strongly than in climbers and did not clearly refer to grip types. To learn about categorical knowledge activation in Experiment 2, a priming paradigm was applied. Images of hands in grasping postures were presented as targets and images of congruent, neutral, or incongruent climbing holds were used as primes. Only in climbers, reaction times were shorter and error rates were smaller for the congruent condition than for the incongruent condition. The neutral condition resulted in intermediate performance. The findings suggest that perception of climbing holds activates the commonly associated grasping postures in climbers but not in non-climbers. The findings of this study give evidence that the categorization of visually perceived objects is fundamentally influenced by the cognitive-motor potential for interaction, which depends on the observer's experience and expertise. Thus, motor expertise not only facilitates precise action perception, but also benefits the perception of action-relevant objects.
The motor system is engaged when we perceive movement in the environment, even when we have no sensorimotor experience of that movement. It has been suggested that this ability relies on internal models that comprise specific exteroceptive representations, such as audition and vision. It has been shown that, for human movements, the quality of perception depends on the closeness between the perceived movement and the perceiver’s own capability of reproducing it. Thus, if we are able to reproduce a movement, we also have the interoceptive motor memories that enable us to run internal models and perceive the same movements more accurately when merely observed. In a behavioral study we investigated if participants would be able to distinguish between self-produced and other-produced movement sounds from a previously recorded hurdling performance. We also analyzed if participants’ discriminative ability would vary as a function of specific sound features, examining rhythmic step structure and amplitude range. The results reveal that participants were able to distinguish between their own and others’ movement sounds. However, changing either rhythmic step structure or amplitude range of the sounds did not influence this self–other discrimination. We suggest that identification of one’s own movement sounds is holistically achieved as an auditory gestalt.
The present functional magnetic resonance imaging study examined the neural response to familiar and unfamiliar, sport and non-sport environmental sounds in expert and novice athletes. Results revealed differential neural responses dependent on sports expertise. Experts had greater neural activation than novices in focal sensorimotor areas such as the supplementary motor area, and pre- and postcentral gyri. Novices showed greater activation than experts in widespread areas involved in perception (i.e. supramarginal, middle occipital, and calcarine gyri; precuneus; inferior and superior parietal lobules), and motor planning and processing (i.e. inferior frontal, middle frontal, and middle temporal gyri). These between-group neural differences also appeared as an expertise effect within specific conditions. Experts showed greater activation than novices during the sport familiar condition in regions responsible for auditory and motor planning, including the inferior frontal gyrus and the parietal operculum. Novices only showed greater activation than experts in the supramarginal gyrus and pons during the non-sport unfamiliar condition, and in the middle frontal gyrus during the sport unfamiliar condition. These results are consistent with the view that expert athletes are attuned to only the most familiar, highly relevant sounds and tune out unfamiliar, irrelevant sounds. Furthermore, these findings that athletes show activation in areas known to be involved in action planning when passively listening to sounds suggests that auditory perception of action can lead to the re-instantiation of neural areas involved in producing these actions, especially if someone has expertise performing the actions.
Along with superior performance, research indicates that expertise is associated with a number of mediating cognitive adaptations. To this extent, extensive practice is associated with the development of general and task-specific mental representations, which play an important role in the organization and control of action. Recently, new experimental methods have been developed, which allow for investigating the organization and structure of these representations, along with the functional structure of the movement kinematics. In the current article, we present a new approach for examining the overlap between skill representations and motor output. In doing so, we first present an architecture model, which addresses links between biomechanical and cognitive levels of motor control. Next, we review the state of the art in assessing memory structures underlying complex action. Following we present a new spatio-temporal decomposition method for illuminating the functional structure of movement kinematics, and finally, we apply these methods to investigate the overlap between the structure of motor representations in memory and their corresponding kinematic structures. Our aim is to understand the extent to which the output at a kinematic level is governed by representations at a cognitive level of motor control.
This article examines the cognitive architecture of complex movements, how it is organized over several levels and is built on specific building blocks. Basic Action Concepts (BACs) are identified as the major building blocks on the level of mental representations. These BACs are cognitive tools for mastering the functional demands of movement tasks. New experimental methods are introduced and applied in studies addressing the functional link between representation structures and human performance. Results from two different lines of research showed that not only is the structure formation of mental representations in long‐term memory built upon BACs, but so is chunk formation in working memory and systematically relates systematically to movement structures. Further lines of experimental research in various fields of sport showed that cognitive subsystems work together functionally with different levels of movement architecture in order to solve movement tasks. These results support the hypothesis that voluntary movements are planned, executed, and stored in memory directly through representations of their anticipated perceptual effects. Conclusions are drawn for new forms of mental training as well as new ways of carrying out technical preparation.
Information Processes, Stimulation and Perceptual Training in Fencing
Learning and development of motor skills and techniques in fencing and other sports with open motor habits are based on perceptual processes involving the senses of vision, touch, and hearing. In fencing, the same stimuli can yield defensive or offensive actions, which are strictly related to the tactics and strategy. Different types of stimulation determine reaction time, movement time, and muscle bioelectric tension (EMG) in fencing. From the training process, controlling the significance of dominant stimuli should be taken into account. The results of presented studies of advanced and novice fencers show that the time of reaction to tactile stimulation is similar or slightly shorter than to acoustic stimuli followed by visual stimuli. The advanced fencers were faster than the novice fencers in all the studied parameters. The EMG signal was significantly lower in case of advanced fencers in all three types of stimulation. It can be a proof that the psycho-motor superiority of elite fencers results in a reduction of the bioelectrical tension of muscles involved in performing the motor tasks. Perceptual skills enable athletes to respond to important signals in sport competition and ignore disrupting ones which lower the effectiveness of sports combat. Time pressure during sports competition makes it necessary to reduce as much as possible the decision-making time and the time of sensorimotor responses in the motor phase. The study results show that experienced athletes make decisions much faster than their novice colleagues. It conforms to the main strategy of perceptual training, (i.e., gaining maximum benefits at the lowest expense). Speed of decision-making is strictly associated with the stimuli detection effectiveness and re-creation of acquired motor patterns.
It has been shown that humans are able to recognise their own movement. While visual cues have been amply studied, the contribution of auditory cues is not clear. Our aim was to investigate the role of temporal auditory cues in the identification of one's own or others' performance in a complex movement--a golf swing. We investigated whether golfers are able to discriminate between the sounds associated with their own swings and other golfers' swings, by using the relative timing and the overall duration of the movement. The sounds produced by the participants performing 65 m shots have been recorded and used to create the stimuli. The experimental conditions were: participants' swing sounds and the sounds of other golfers having equal both relative timing and overall duration, equal relative timing but different overall duration, different relative timing but equal overall duration, and both different relative timing and overall duration. The task of the participants was to say whether each sound corresponded or did not correspond to their own swing. Results show that golfers are able to recognise their own movements, but they also recognise as their own the sound produced by other athletes having equal both relative timing and overall duration.
AimsThis study was designed to elicit differences in the mental representations of two basic movements from classical ballet, the Pirouette en dehors and the Pas assemblé, stored in long-term memory of dancers of different skill-levels.MethodThe movements were demonstrated and explained verbally to professional ballet dancers, amateur dancers, and non-dancers. Subsequently, participants were assigned to a hierarchical sorting (splitting) task in which Basic Action Concepts (BACs) of the movements had to be sorted according to their functional relevance in movement execution. The task was presented as verbal labels on a computer screen. The responses were subjected to the application of a new analytical method, called SDA-M, which includes a hierarchical cluster analysis. The method enabled eliciting cognitive structures of the movements in the participants' long-term memory, and thus enabled comparing these cognitive structures in subjects of different skill-level.ResultsParticipants of different skill-level showed movement-specific differences in their mental representation structures in long-term memory. A similar structure was noted in advanced amateurs and professionals for the Pirouette en dehors, which referred to the functional phases of the movement, and less functional representations were noted in beginners and novices. For the Pas assemblé, the experts' representation structure was different from that of amateurs and novices, pointing toward differences in movement execution. It is concluded that movement representations of this kind in long-term memory might provide the basis for motor control in skilled ballet movements in the form of suitably organized perceptual-cognitive reference structures.ImplicationsThe results point toward a unique mental representation as a function of skill-level and movement nature. Individual and group results obtained with the applied method can be implemented to support (mental) training methods in classical dance practice.
The present study examined whether results of athletes' eye movements while they observe fencing attacks reflect their actual information pickup by comparing these results with others gained with temporal and spatial occlusion and cuing techniques. Fifteen top-ranking expert fencers, 15 advanced fencers, and 32 sport students predicted the target region of 405 fencing attacks on a computer monitor. Results of eye movement recordings showed a stronger foveal fixation on the opponent's trunk and weapon in the two fencer groups. Top-ranking expert fencers fixated particularly on the upper trunk. This matched their performance decrements in the spatial occlusion condition. However, when the upper trunk was occluded, participants also shifted eye movements to neighboring body regions. Adding cues to the video material had no positive effects on prediction performance. We conclude that gaze behavior does not necessarily represent information pickup, but that studies applying the spatial occlusion paradigm should also register eye movements to avoid underestimating the information contributed by occluded regions.
Cognitive load theory suggests that effective instructional material facilitates learning by directing cognitive resources toward activities that are relevant to learning rather than toward preliminaries to learning. One example of ineffective instruction occurs if learners unnecessarily are required to mentally integrate disparate sources of mutually referring information such as separate text and diagrams. Such split-source infonnation may generate a heavy cognitive load, because material must be mentally integrated before learning can commence. This article reports findings from six experiments testing the consequences of split-source and integrated information using electrical engineering and biology instructional materials. Experiment 1 was designed to compare conventional instructions with integrated instructions over a period of several months in an industrial training setting. The materials chosen were unintelligible without mental integration. Results favored integrated instructions throughout the 3-month study. Experiment 2 was designed to investigate the possible differences between conventional and integrated instructions in areas in which it was not essential for sources of information to be integrated to be understood. The results suggest that integrated instructions were no better than split-source infonnation in such areas. Experiments 3, 4, and 5 indicate that the introduction of seemingly useful but nonessential explanatory material (e.g., a commentary on a diagram) could have deleterious effects even when presented in integrated format. Experiment 6 found that the need for physical integration was restored if the material was organized in such a manner that individual units could not be understood alone. In light of these results and previous findings, suggestions are made for cognitively guided instructional packages.
Events like the World Championships in athletics and the Olympic Games raise the public profile of competitive sports. They may also leave us wondering what sets the competitors in these events apart from those of us who simply watch. Here we attempt to link neural and cognitive processes that have been found to be important for elite performance with computational and physiological theories inspired by much simpler laboratory tasks. In this way we hope to inspire neuroscientists to consider how their basic research might help to explain sporting skill at the highest levels of performance.
We combined psychophysical and transcranial magnetic stimulation studies to investigate the dynamics of action anticipation and its underlying neural correlates in professional basketball players. Athletes predicted the success of free shots at a basket earlier and more accurately than did individuals with comparable visual experience (coaches or sports journalists) and novices. Moreover, performance between athletes and the other groups differed before the ball was seen to leave the model's hands, suggesting that athletes predicted the basket shot's fate by reading the body kinematics. Both visuo-motor and visual experts showed a selective increase of motor-evoked potentials during observation of basket shots. However, only athletes showed a time-specific motor activation during observation of erroneous basket throws. Results suggest that achieving excellence in sports may be related to the fine-tuning of specific anticipatory 'resonance' mechanisms that endow elite athletes' brains with the ability to predict others' actions ahead of their realization.
Anticipation skill in tennis was examined using realistic film simulations, movement-based response measures, and a portable eye movement recording system. Skilled players were faster than their less skilled counterparts in anticipating the direction of opponents' tennis strokes, with this superior performance being based, at least in part, on more effective visual search behaviors. The processes mediating superior performance were then modeled in groups of recreational tennis players using video simulation, instruction, and feedback. Players who received perceptual training improved their performance on laboratory- and field-based tests of anticipation when compared with matched placebo and control groups that did not receive any instruction regarding expert performance strategies. The approach used may have practical utility in a variety of performance contexts.
The capability of cricket batsmen of different skill levels to pick-up information from the pre-release movement pattern of the bowler, from pre-bounce ball flight, and from post-bounce ball flight was examined experimentally. Six highly skilled and six low-skilled cricket batsmen batted against three different leg-spin bowlers while wearing liquid crystal spectacles. The spectacles permitted the specific information available to the batsmen on each trial to be manipulated such that vision was either: (i) occluded at a point prior to the point of ball release (thereby only allowing vision of advance information from the bowler's delivery action); (ii) occluded at a point prior to the point of ball bounce (thereby permitting the additional vision of pre-bounce ball flight); or (iii) not occluded (thereby permitting the additional vision of post-bounce ball flight information). Measurement was made on each trial of both the accuracy of the definitive (forward-backward) foot movements made by the batsmen and their success (or otherwise) in making bat-ball contact. The analyses revealed a superior capability of the more skilled players to make use of earlier (pre-bounce) ball flight information to guide successful bat-ball interception, thus mirroring the greater use of prospective information pick-up by skilled performers observed in other aspects of batting and in other time-constrained performance domains.
People perceive and conceive of activity in terms of discrete events. Here the authors propose a theory according to which the perception of boundaries between events arises from ongoing perceptual processing and regulates attention and memory. Perceptual systems continuously make predictions about what will happen next. When transient errors in predictions arise, an event boundary is perceived. According to the theory, the perception of events depends on both sensory cues and knowledge structures that represent previously learned information about event parts and inferences about actors' goals and plans. Neurological and neurophysiological data suggest that representations of events may be implemented by structures in the lateral prefrontal cortex and that perceptual prediction error is calculated and evaluated by a processing pathway, including the anterior cingulate cortex and subcortical neuromodulatory systems.
Grounded cognition rejects traditional views that cognition is computation on amodal symbols in a modular system, independent of the brain's modal systems for perception, action, and introspection. Instead, grounded cognition proposes that modal simulations, bodily states, and situated action underlie cognition. Accumulating behavioral and neural evidence supporting this view is reviewed from research on perception, memory, knowledge, language, thought, social cognition, and development. Theories of grounded cognition are also reviewed, as are origins of the area and common misperceptions of it. Theoretical, empirical, and methodological issues are raised whose future treatment is likely to affect the growth and impact of grounded cognition.
Research focusing on perceptual-cognitive skill in sport is abundant. However, the existing qualitative syntheses of this research lack the quantitative detail necessary to determine the magnitude of differences between groups of varying levels of skills, thereby limiting the theoretical and practical contribution of this body of literature. We present a meta-analytic review focusing on perceptual-cognitive skill in sport (N = 42 studies, 388 effect sizes) with the primary aim of quantifying expertise differences. Effects were calculated for a variety of dependent measures (i.e., response accuracy, response time, number of visual fixations, visual fixation duration, and quiet eye period) using point-biserial correlation. Results indicated that experts are better than nonexperts in picking up perceptual cues, as revealed by measures of response accuracy and response time. Systematic differences in visual search behaviors were also observed, with experts using fewer fixations of longer duration, including prolonged quiet eye periods, compared with non-experts. Several factors (e.g., sport type, research paradigm employed, and stimulus presentation modality) significantly moderated the relationship between level of expertise and perceptual-cognitive skill. Practical and theoretical implications are presented and suggestions for empirical work are provided.
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 two lines of research with the aim to investigate the contribution of
early auditory and visual information to the discrimination of shot power in sport-specific situations.
Design: Two experiments were run, one concerning soccer penalty kicks and the other concerning
volleyball smashes. In both experiments there were three conditions: Audio, Audiovideo, and Video; a
within subjects design was used, with the three conditions carried out in three different days and in a
counterbalanced order among participants.
Method: Participants’ task was to discriminate the power of two penalties/smashes presented in rapid
sequence, on the basis of a two-alternative forced choice paradigm.
Results: The results revealed that, for both penalties and smashes, response accuracy was above chance
level in all the three conditions; moreover, while for the penalties no difference among the conditions
was observed, for the smashes participants were more accurate in the Audio and Audiovideo conditions
compared to the Video condition. As concerns the response times, for both penalties and smashes
participants were faster in the Audio and Audiovideo conditions compared to the Video condition.
Conclusions: Taken together, the results suggest that the discrimination of shot power was more easily
performed on the basis of early auditory information than on the basis of the respective visual
information.
The perceptual brain is designed around multisensory input. Areas once thought dedicated to a single sense are now known to work with multiple senses. It has been argued that the multisensory nature of the brain reflects a cortical architecture for which task, rather than sensory system, is the primary design principle. This supramodal thesis is supported by recent research on human echolocation and multisensory speech perception. In this review, we discuss the behavioural implications of a supramodal architecture, especially as they pertain to auditory perception. We suggest that the architecture implies a degree of perceptual parity between the senses and that cross-sensory integration occurs early and completely. We also argue that a supramodal architecture implies that perceptual experience can be shared across modalities and that this sharing should occur even without bimodal experience. We finish by briefly suggesting areas of future research.
The paper is concerned with the nature of expert perception in a fast-action skill, baseball batting. In particular we were interested in understanding what visual information is used by elite batters and when such information is «picked-up» by the expert through the knowledge structure that has developed for the skill. Thirty baseball players participated in the two experiments as either an expert (N = 15) or novice (N = 15) batter based on their experience and batting statistics. Experiment 1 provided displays of pitching, with batters providing a decision time response (which removed the display), and also reporting a prediction of where the ball would pass through the strike zone. Further, batters were tested on their ability to set probabilities about the forthcoming pitch, and how this might affect batting performance. Experiment 2 examined the use of information throughout the pitch with occlusion of the information in the display at five points before (advance cues) and during the ball flight. Accuracy of prediction was measured in this experiment to establish the value of the information to the point of occlusion in the display. Significantly superior scores in both decision time and accuracy scores were found for expert batters over novices in Experiment 1. Further, both groups were able to use strategic game information to set probabilities about the forthcoming pitch and significantly improve performance on that pitch. Results in Experiment 2 were less conclusive, with experts generally showing an increase in accuracy throughout the pitch occlusion stages, but without an expected greater accuracy for cues provided in advance of the movement of ball release (MOR). Of interest, however, were scores produced by both groups in early occlusion stages for different types of pitches. It would seem that the first 80 ms (approximately 3 m of ball flight) is important to pitch recognition. It is shown, then, that attention to the early cues provided in baseball pitching is critical to batting performance. This is supported in that experts perform faster,without sacrificing accuracy, and that batters can recognize the type of pitch within 3 m of ball flight. Further, this ability is improved with the correct setting of a probability about the forthcoming pitch. These results support the proposal for the development of sophisticated knowledge structure which can make use of particular cues in the display to guide both perception and action.
Published research in English-language journals are increasingly required to carry a statement that the study has been approved and monitored by an Institutional Review Board in conformance with 45 CFR 46 standards if the study was conducted in the United States. Alternative language attesting conformity with the Helsinki Declaration is often included when the research was conducted in Europe or elsewhere. The Helsinki Declaration was created by the World Medical Association in 1964 (ten years before the Belmont Report) and has been amended several times. The Helsinki Declaration differs from its American version in several respects, the most significant of which is that it was developed by and for physicians. The term "patient" appears in many places where we would expect to see "subject." It is stated in several places that physicians must either conduct or have supervisory control of the research. The dual role of the physician-researcher is acknowledged, but it is made clear that the role of healer takes precedence over that of scientist. In the United States, the federal government developed and enforces regulations on researcher; in the rest of the world, the profession, or a significant part of it, took the initiative in defining and promoting good research practice, and governments in many countries have worked to harmonize their standards along these lines. The Helsinki Declaration is based less on key philosophical principles and more on prescriptive statements. Although there is significant overlap between the Belmont and the Helsinki guidelines, the latter extends much further into research design and publication. Elements in a research protocol, use of placebos, and obligation to enroll trials in public registries (to ensure that negative findings are not buried), and requirements to share findings with the research and professional communities are included in the Helsinki Declaration. As a practical matter, these are often part of the work of American IRBs, but not always as a formal requirement. Reflecting the socialist nature of many European counties, there is a requirement that provision be made for patients to be made whole regardless of the outcomes of the trial or if they happened to have been randomized to a control group that did not enjoy the benefits of a successful experimental intervention.
The purpose of the present study was to examine reaction time, movement time (MT) and electromyography sig-nals under conditions of tactile, acoustic and visual stimulation. Two groups of subjects took part in the study – one consisting of advanced fencers (n = 12, average age 22.3) having practiced fencing for an average of 8.3 years; and the other consisting of novice fencers (n = 15, average age 14.8) having practiced fencing for an average of 2.8 years. The research tool applied in the study was an innovative system of surface electromyography with peripheral equip-ment that enabled participants' reactions to tactile, audio and visual stimulation to be recorded. The system made it possible to record RT and MT separately. The subjects were exposed to forty five stimuli in a randomized manner for each type of stimulation. The tested fencers responded fastest to tactile stimuli, then to acoustic stimuli, and in a much slower way to visual stimuli (p < 0.01). The advanced fencers exhibited significantly lower values of RT, MT, and EMG in comparison with the novice fencers. Both groups exhibited a decrease in the EMG signal value during the tactile, acoustic and visual stimulation trials, supporting the hypothesis. A slight coincidence of EMG signal curves was also observed in the visual stimuli test. It can be concluded that visual perception lowers muscle tension in novice fencers (p < 0.050).
Recent neuroscientific studies have identified activity changes in an extensive cerebral network consisting of medial prefrontal cortex, precuneus, temporo-parietal junction, and temporal pole during the perception and identification of self- and other-generated stimuli. Because this network is supposed to be engaged in tasks which require agent identification, it has been labeled the evaluation network (e-network). The present study used self- versus other-generated movement sounds (long jumps) and electroencephalography (EEG) in order to unravel the temporal and neural dynamics of agent identification for complex auditory information. Participants (N = 14) performed an auditory self- other identification task with electroencephalography (EEG) and a subsequent standardized low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) analysis (source localization analysis). Differences between conditions were assessed using t- statistics (corrected for multiple testing) on the normalized and log-transformed current density values of the sLORETA images. Three-dimensional sLORETA source localization analysis revealed cortical activations in brain regions mostly associated with the e-network, especially in the medial prefrontal cortex (bilaterally in the alpha-1 -band and right-lateralized in the gamma -band) and the temporo-parietal junction (right hemisphere in the alpha-1 -band). Taken together, the findings are partly consistent with previous functional neuroimaging studies investigating unimodal visual or multimodal agent identification tasks (cf. e-network) and extent them to the auditory domain. Cortical activations in brain regions of the e-network seem to have functional relevance, especially the significantly higher cortical activation in the right medial prefrontal cortex.
Studies of deception detection traditionally have focused on verbal communication. Nevertheless, people commonly deceive others through nonverbal cues. Previous research has shown that intentions can be inferred from the ways in which people move their bodies. Furthermore, motor expertise within a given domain has been shown to increase visual sensitivity to other people's movements within that domain. Does expertise also enhance deception detection from bodily movement? In two psychophysical studies, experienced basketball players and novices attempted to distinguish deceptive intentions (fake passes) and veridical intentions (true passes) from an observed individual's actions. Whereas experts and novices performed similarly with postural cues, only experts could detect deception from kinematics alone. These results demonstrate a link between action expertise and the detection of nonverbal deception.
The visual search characteristics of expert and novice squash players were compared in two experiments. In the first experiment subjects were required to predict the forthcoming direction and force of an opponent's stroke from a film display. This film display was designed to simulate the normal display available to the defending player in squash and involved the use of variable temporal cut-offs to force the subjects to use advance cues in their prediction. Systematic differences in the information pick-up of the experts and novices were observed on the film task but these differences were achieved with only relatively minor between-group variations in visual search strategy. In the second experiment, set in the natural field setting, no expert-novice differences in either fixation distribution, order, or duration were observed on a comparable prediction task. This provided further support for the conclusion that the limiting factor in the perceptual performance of the novices is not an inappropriate search strategy but rather an inability to make full use of the information available from fixated display features. Some practical implications of these findings for the squash coach and player are considered.
Bowlers in cricket try to disguise their bowling action by movement pattern similarity. The batter's task is, therefore, to solve rapidly perceptual discrimination problems. Previous research has suggested that batters can discriminate perceptual cues that provide depth or target information. However, at present, there is a lack of applied research evidence on further perceptual cue utilization, including bowling delivery identification. This ability is required when batting against wrist-spin bowlers who may use five different types of delivery. In the present study, we assessed this perceptual discrimination ability among three distinct standards of batters. In addition, the relative potency of body action and ball flight information was assessed by visual occlusion techniques. We found that more expert batters in general showed greater perceptual discrimination skills when faced with different ball types. However, this discrimination ability was linked specifically to delivery type and to previous experience. We also found that additional ball flight information provided no more advantage to this discrimination ability. This finding reinforces the importance of advanced cue information and the need to expose cricket batters to different bowling actions. Further study of the development of movement pattern recognition is recommended.
The number of researchers studying perceptual-cognitive expertise in sport is increasing. The intention in this paper is to review the currently accepted framework for studying expert performance and to consider implications for undertaking research work in the area of perceptual-cognitive expertise in sport. The expert performance approach presents a descriptive and inductive approach for the systematic study of expert performance. The nature of expert performance is initially captured in the laboratory using representative tasks that identify reliably superior performance. Process-tracing measures are employed to determine the mechanisms that mediate expert performance on the task. Finally, the specific types of activities that lead to the acquisition and development of these mediating mechanisms are identified. General principles and mechanisms may be discovered and then validated by more traditional experimental designs. The relevance of this approach to the study of perceptual-cognitive expertise in sport is discussed and suggestions for future work highlighted.
The human brain contains specialized circuits for observing and understanding actions. Previous studies have not distinguished whether this "mirror system" uses specialized motor representations or general processes of visual inference and knowledge to understand observed actions. We report the first neuroimaging study to distinguish between these alternatives. Purely motoric influences on perception have been shown behaviorally, but their neural bases are unknown. We used fMRI to reveal the neural bases of motor influences on action observation. We controlled for visual and knowledge effects by studying expert dancers. Some ballet moves are performed by only one gender. However, male and female dancers train together and have equal visual familiarity with all moves. Male and female dancers viewed videos of gender-specific male and female ballet moves. We found greater premotor, parietal, and cerebellar activity when dancers viewed moves from their own motor repertoire, compared to opposite-gender moves that they frequently saw but did not perform. Our results show that mirror circuits have a purely motor response over and above visual representations of action. We understand actions not only by visual recognition, but also motorically. In addition, we confirm that the cerebellum is part of the action observation network.
In a series of 3 experiments, the authors examined the ability of badminton players of different skill levels (12 experts and 12 nonexperts) to anticipate the direction of badminton strokes. Participants viewed either film or point-light displays under a range of temporal or spatial occlusion conditions. World-class players were able to consistently pick up useful predictive information from the advance (precontact) kinematics of both the lower body and the racquet when the motion of those features was presented in isolation, whereas recreational players' use of the same information depended on the concurrent presence of linked segments. Participants' information pickup closely matched key biomechanical changes in the movement pattern being viewed, although, contrary to a common-coding view of perception and action (e.g., W. Prinz, 1997), some important differences were evident between the characteristics of the experts' movement prediction and those of expert movement production.
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