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Mind in action: the interplay of cognition and action in skilled performance
International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology
... It has been shown, for example, that decisionmaking is influenced by uncertainty (Beck et al., 2023) and biased by motor processes (Grießbach et al., 2021;Grießbach et al., 2022;Grießbach et al., 2023;Raßbach et al., 2024). These findings imply that decision-making is not only constrained by individual cognitive differences, but also by differences and prerequisites in motor capabilities and the related ability to physically execute a required decision (Harris et al., 2022;Voigt & Raab, 2024) (see Figure 2). ...
In sports, athletes are frequently challenged to make decisions under time constraints. The ability of skilled athletes to make successful and seemingly effortless decisions in these situations is often referred to as intuition. However, how athletes develop intuition remains to be elucidated. A key issue highly debated between proponents of opposing theoretical views is whether the development of intuitive decision-making benefits from the involvement of deliberate cognitive processes (explicit vs. implicit). In this perspective paper, we critically assess theoretical arguments and empirical evidence for these contradictory views. Moreover, by delving into cognitive psychological assumptions rooted in dual-process theory, we elucidate the proposed processes underlying the development of intuitive decision-making. While the use of implicit approaches seems to be increasingly questioned in this domain, a promising recent theoretical proposal argues that intuition is formed through repeated practice of deliberative processes. We argue in favor of this approach and present suggestions for empirical research to test the proposal for the development of intuitive decision-making in sport. Finally, we illustrate suggestions for future research and critically discuss the potential and limitations of such an approach.
Skilled anticipation is underpinned by the ability to synthesise high- (e.g., context) and low-level (e.g., biological motion) processes. While researchers have highlighted the effect of physiological load on the pick-up of biological motion from an opponent’s kinematics, how such stress affects the use of contextual information has remained unexplored. In this paper, we conducted an experiment to examine how a fatigue-inducing, cricket-specific exercise protocol affects the use of contextual and kinematic information during anticipation. Altogether, 13 skilled batters completed a validated simulated cricket batting task designed to induce physiological responses representative of competition. Before, after, and during the exercise protocol, participants anticipated the end location of bowling deliveries that presented either opponent kinematics, contextual information (field positioning and game situation), or both. Anticipation responses were more accurate during the exercise protocol than at rest. Also, responses were more accurate when contextual information was available compared with when only kinematic cues were presented. Moreover, from the beginning to the end of the protocol, anticipation responses decreased in accuracy in those conditions in which contextual information was presented and increased in accuracy when only kinematic cues were available. We interpret the findings relative to Attentional Control Theory (Eysenck et al., 2007). Findings highlight the complex nature of expert sports performance and indicate that the effect of domain-specific exercise on anticipation is dependent on the physiological load experienced and the type of information available.
The investigation of Executive Functions (EF) has become a trending topic of investigation in sport science. This critical review provides a comprehensive synthesis of the underlying theory and the typical methodology (and problems with the methodology) in the interdisciplinary study of EFs as it relates to the two most researched questions within the sports literature: 1) if the engagement in sports and exercise can enhance EFs; and 2) if and how EFs contribute to superior performance/expertise in sports. A critical evaluation on theoretical and methodological work on EF shows numerous problems on how to conceptualize and measure the EF construct. These problems within the basic research on EF seem to be widely overlooked in the sport literature and have contributed to ambiguous empirical evidence on the question if sport and physical exercise can be used to train EF. Similarly, the second question ‘if EF contribute to superior performance in (some) sports’ has also received inconclusive empirical support. We conclude by pointing out avenues for future theoretical and empirical work regarding the important topic of EF in sport and exercise.
Successful sports performance often requires choosing what to do and how to do it in dynamic, complex, and uncertain environments. Thus, an understanding of the processes underpinning judgment and decision making in sports (JDMS) is crucial for both researchers and applied practitioners. Despite the research developments, examining JDMS from several perspectives, there are still significant gaps in the knowledge of the processes involved. In this article we explore how the theoretical understanding of JDMS can be extended by acknowledging that cognition and action dynamics are intertwined, deploy in parallel, and influence each other bidirectionally. We present a holistic approach that integrates simple heuristics and embodied cognition to explain JDMS. Importantly , our aim is not to devalue previous JDMS theories but rather to exemplify how embodied choices can redirect the current interpretation of judgment and decision-making processes in sports. Taking this embodied choice perspective, we reinterpret the findings of four prototypical research papers on JDMS, each representing one of the most influential perspectives in JDMS (i.e., the economic, social cognition, cognitive, and ecological dynamics approaches). Last, we discuss future directions for JDMS research from an embodied choice perspective.
Cognition plays a key role in sports performance. This meta-analytic review synthesizes research that examined the relationship between cognitive functions, skills, and sports performance. We identified literature by searching Cochrane Library, APA PsycINFO, PubMed, and Web of Science. We included studies conducted on competitive athletes, assessed cognitive prerequisites, and included performance measures related to the sport. Of the 9,433 screened records, 136 reports were included, containing 142 studies, 1,227 effect sizes, and 8,860 participants. Only 11 studies used a prospective study design. The risk of bias was assessed using the Risk of Bias Assessment Tool for Nonrandomized Studies. The multilevel meta-analysis showed a medium effect size for the overall difference in cognitive functions and skills, with higher skilled athletes scoring better than lower skilled athletes (Hedges' g = 0.59, 95% CI [0.49, 0.69]). The moderator analysis showed larger effect size for tests of cognitive decision-making skills (g = 0.77, 95% CI [0.6, 0.94]) compared to basic (g = 0.39, 95% CI [0.21, 0.56]) and higher cognitive functions (g = 0.44, 95% CI [0.26, 0.62]), as well as larger effect for sport-specific task stimuli compared to general ones. We report that higher skilled athletes perform better on cognitive function tests than lower skilled athletes. There was insufficient evidence to determine whether cognitive functions and skills can predict future sport performance. We found no evidence to support claims that tests of general cognitive functions, such as executive functioning, should be used by practitioners for talent identification or player selection. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
Within just 7 years, behavioral decision research in psychology underwent a dramatic change: In 1967, Peterson and Beach (1967) reviewed more than 160 experiments concerned with people's statistical intuitions. Invoking the metaphor of the mind as an intuitive statistician, they concluded that "probability theory and statistics can be used as the basis for psychological models that integrate and account for human performance in a wide range of inferential tasks" (p. 29). Yet in a 1974 Science article, Tversky and Kahneman rejected this conclusion, arguing that "people rely on a limited number of heuristic principles which reduce the complex tasks of assessing probabilities and predicting values to simple judgmental operations" (p. 1124). With that, they introduced the heuristics-and-biases research program, which has profoundly altered how psychology, and the behavioral sciences more generally, view the mind's competences and rationality. How was this radical transformation possible? We examine a previously neglected driver: The heuristics-and-biases program established an experimental protocol in behavioral decision research that relied on described scenarios rather than learning and experience. We demonstrate this shift with an analysis of 604 experiments, which shows that the descriptive protocol has dominated post-1974 research. Specifically, we examine two lines of research addressed in the intuitive-statistician program (Bayesian reasoning and judgments of compound events) and two lines of research spurred by the heuristics-and-biases program (framing and anchoring and adjustment). We conclude that the focus on description at the expense of learning has profoundly shaped the influential view of the error-proneness of human cognition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
Human motor skills are exceptional compared to other species, no less than their cognitive skills. In this perspective paper, we suggest that “movement matters!,” implying that motor development is a crucial driving force of cognitive development, much more impactful than previously acknowledged. Thus, we argue that to fully understand and explain developmental changes, it is necessary to consider the interaction of motor and cognitive skills. We exemplify this argument by introducing the concept of “embodied planning,” which takes an embodied cognition perspective on planning development throughout childhood. From this integrated, comprehensive framework, we present a novel climbing paradigm as the ideal testbed to explore the development of embodied planning in childhood and across the lifespan. Finally, we outline future research directions and discuss practical applications of the work on developmental embodied planning for robotics, sports, and education.
There is a vast amount of literature concerning the integration of action and cognition. Although this broad research area is of great interest for many disciplines like sports, psychology and cognitive neuroscience, only a few attempts tried to bring together different perspectives so far. Our goal is to provide a perspective to spark a debate across theoretical borders and integration of different disciplines via psychophysiology. In order to boost advances in this research field it is not only necessary to become aware of the different areas that are relevant but also to consider methodological aspects and challenges. We briefly describe the most relevant theoretical accounts to the question of how internal and external information processes or factors interact and, based on this, argue that research programs should consider the three dimensions: (a) dynamics of movements; (b) multivariate measures and; (c) dynamic statistical parameters. Only with an extended perspective on theoretical and methodological accounts, one would be able to integrate the dynamics of actions into theoretical advances.
Psychology’s most vital challenge is to strengthen its theoretical fundament. Popper’s program of competitive testing and the development of unified theories are 2 common routes toward this end. This article proposes a third and complementary route: the integration of already existing theories. To provide a systematic framework, I propose a 2-step theory integration program. The first step is integration of phenomena, that is, the study of how apparently disparate robust observations are theoretically connected, not just empirically correlated. The second step is integration of theoretical concepts, that is, the study of how apparently different explanatory concepts are linked. Links between phenomena or concepts include identity, nesting, and functional equivalence. Functional equivalence means that 2 or more psychologically distinct theoretical concepts can be shown to imply the same behavioral pattern by vicarious functioning. The 2-step program requires formalization and close attention to operational and conceptual definitions. It should not be seen as an algorithm that can be automatically applied, but as a heuristic method requiring creativity for building a network between theories.
A commentary on The sexualized-body-inversion hypothesis revisited: Valid indicator of sexual objectification or methodological artifact? by Schmidt, A. F., and Kistemaker, L. M. (2015). Cognition 134, 77-84. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2014.09.003 Recent objectification research found results consistent with the sexualized body-inversion hypothesis (SBIH): People relied on analytic, “object-like” processing when recognizing sexualized female bodies and on configural processing when recognizing sexualized male bodies (Bernard et al., 2012). Specifically, Bernard et al. (2012) showed that perceivers were better at recognizing sexualized male bodies when the bodies were presented upright than upside down, whereas this pattern did not emerge for sexualized female bodies; thus, male bodies were recognized configurally similar to other human stimuli whereas female bodies were recognized analytically, similarly to most objects (see Kostic, 2013 for an exact replication). Based on two studies, Schmidt and Kistemaker (2015) concluded that Bernard et al. (2012)'s findings were: (i) due to a symmetry confound; (ii) not due to target's sexualization. This commentary challenges these conclusions.
Sports officials are responsible for the correct enforcement of laws and regulations at sporting competitions and games. To meet these high expectations and making correct judgments and the right decisions, they have to develop a great amount of expertise, usually reached through a variety of experiences and different sources of information. For instance, one of the factors influencing the performance of sports officials and therefore leading to expertise comes from the sports officials themselves, by developing alongside their sporting career. The following chapter will give an overview of a new perspective on expertise of sports officials by focusing on these internal factors from an embodied cognition viewpoint. In more detail, studies will be reviewed that have analyzed and interpreted the sports officials' previous experiences as athletes (motor experience) and spectators (visual experience) and their officiating experiences in terms of their relation to officiating performance. This line of research in embodied officiating addresses the link between cognitive judgments of sports officials and their motor, visual and officiating experiences. Recent research will be described and transferred to the applied field of sports officials, offering practical implications based on scientific findings. This review will show that in order to describe and understand expertise in sports officiating from a holistic point of view, the field of embodied cognition should be integrated, which so far has been neglected in sports officiating research.
Objectives
There has been considerable inconsistency and confusion in the definition of elite/expert athletes in sport psychology research, which has implications for studies conducted in this area and for the field as a whole. This study aimed to: (i) critically evaluate the ways in which recent research in sport psychology has defined elite/expert athletes; (ii) explore the rationale for using such athletes; and (iii) evaluate the conclusions that research in this field draws about the nature of expertise.
Design
Conventional systematic review principles were employed to conduct a rigorous search and synthesise findings.
Methods
A comprehensive literature search of SPORTDiscus, PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES and Academic Search Complete was completed in September, 2013 which yielded 91 empirical studies published between 2010 and 2013. The primarily qualitative findings were analysed thematically.
Results
Eight ways of defining elite/expert athletes were identified, ranging from Olympic champions to regional level competitors and those with as little as two years of experience in their sport. Three types of rationale were evident in these studies (i.e., “necessity”, “exploratory” and “superior”); while findings also indicated that some elite athletes are psychologically idiosyncratic and perhaps even dysfunctional in their behaviour. Finally, only 19 of the 91 included studies provided conclusions about the nature of expertise in sport.
Conclusions
This study suggests that the definitions of elite athletes vary on a continuum of validity, and the findings are translated into a taxonomy for classifying expert samples in sport psychology research in future. Recommendations are provided for researchers in this area.
We review research related to the learning of complex motor skills with respect to principles developed on the basis of simple skill learning. Although some factors seem to have opposite effects on the learning of simple and of complex skills, other factors appear to be relevant mainly for the learning of more complex skills. We interpret these apparently contradictory findings as suggesting that situations with low processing demands benefit from practice conditions that increase the load and challenge the performer, whereas practice conditions that result in extremely high load should benefit from conditions that reduce the load to more manageable levels. The findings reviewed here call into question the generalizability of results from studies using simple laboratory tasks to the learning of complex motor skills. They also demonstrate the need to use more complex skills in motor-learning research in order to gain further insights into the learning process.
In ball sports, such as volleyball or soccer, the impact sound of the ball is used to define the shot length and predict the final ball position on the field. Several studies thoroughly investigated the role of sound intensity in predicting the ball’s landing point, neglecting the equally important contribution of the sound frequency spectrum component. Here, we investigated the contribution of the sound frequency spectrum in defining a volleyball serve’s length (i.e., distance). We recorded the sound of short and long volleyball serves (ecological sound) and changed their frequency spectrum in pink noise, preserving their intensity (noise sound). We then presented both sounds (ecological and noise) to expert volleyball players and measured their performance in short and long-shot classifications. The role of auditory-motor experience in sound classification was also explored by testing soccer players (experience on ball shots but not sport-specific auditory-motor experience) and non-athletes (no auditory-motor experience in sports). We found that hearing ecological sound leads to better sound discrimination performance than noise sound. Concurrently, we found an effect of the specific auditory-motor experience, with volleyball players outperforming non-athletes and soccer players. Interestingly, experts in different sports domains (soccer players) mainly used sound intensity for shot classification. This underlines the importance of specific auditory-motor experience in encoding specific sound frequency spectrum for the sound of action classification.
Theoretical models of the effect of aerobic activity on concurrent
cognitive tasks predict both impairments and improvements
depending on the specific characteristics of the cognitive task. It
can be assumed that both aerobic and cognitive tasks share
neural resources of limited capacity (such as self-control) or that
they interact by confliction or facilitation of brain activation.
Detrimental effects are thus expected for cognitive tasks requiring
self-control or conflicting brain activation. Effects of cognitive
tasks on simultaneous aerobic activity have rarely been
investigated, but predictions can be made by adaptations of the
same theoretical models. The predicted effects should be
enhanced at higher intensities due to increasing drains of neural
resources and stronger brain activations. The current study aimed
to investigate the interaction of aerobic and cognitive tasks under
increasing and maximum physical load. Fifty participants (31 men,
19 women, mean age 22.8 ± 2.6 years) performed two maximum
performance cycling tests, one in combination with mental
rotation tasks (dual-task condition) and one without a cognitive
task (control condition). Cognitive (reaction time, accuracy) and
physical (power, cadence) performance, as well as objective (heart rate) and subjective (cognitive and physical ratings of perceived exertion) effort, were measured during the respective tests. The results showed increased cognitive effort during increased physical load and a focus on speed rather than accuracy, which can be interpreted in support of the models. Physical performance, however, could be upheld without increased physiological effort. The physical results contradict the suspected impairment predicted by the adaptations of the theoretical models.
This systematic review aims to synthesise the cognitive effects of different sports. The major novelty is represented by a nuanced distinction of sport modalities beyond the open–closed skills dichotomy and a focus on interventional research to address causality linking sport practice to transient and longer-lasting cognitive outcomes in acute and chronic sport intervention designs, respectively. Four research databases (Web of Science, PubMed (MEDLINE), Scopus, and SportDiscus) were searched for studies reporting on acute and chronic interventions focused on sports and performed with participants between 6 and 25 years old. A total of 30 studies met our inclusion criteria. Overall, single bouts of sport-based activities and extended sports training interventions generate benefits in various cognitive outcome domains. Such benefits vary among cognitive outcomes and between acute and chronic designs, depending on the specific sport modality.
Psychology and neuroscience are concerned with the study of behavior, of internal cognitive processes, and their neural foundations. However, most laboratory studies use constrained experimental settings that greatly limit the range of behaviors that can be expressed. While focusing on restricted settings ensures methodological control, it risks impoverishing the object of study: by restricting behavior, we might miss key aspects of cognitive and neural functions. In this article, we argue that psychology and neuroscience should increasingly adopt innovative experimental designs, measurement methods, analysis techniques and sophisticated computational models to probe rich, ecologically valid forms of behavior, including social behavior. We discuss the challenges of studying rich forms of behavior as well as the novel opportunities offered by state-of-the-art methodologies and new sensing technologies, and we highlight the importance of developing sophisticated formal models. We exemplify our arguments by reviewing some recent streams of research in psychology, neuroscience and other fields (e.g., sports analytics, ethology and robotics) that have addressed rich forms of behavior in a model-based manner. We hope that these "success cases" will encourage psychologists and neuroscientists to extend their toolbox of techniques with sophisticated behavioral models - and to use them to study rich forms of behavior as well as the cognitive and neural processes that they engage.
Most current decision-making research focuses on classical economic scenarios, where choice offers are prespecified and where action dynamics play no role in the decision. However, our brains evolved to deal with different choice situations: “embodied decisions”. As examples of embodied decisions, consider a lion that has to decide which gazelle to chase in the savannah or a person who has to select the next stone to jump on when crossing a river. Embodied decision settings raise novel questions, such as how people select from time-varying choice options and how they track the most relevant choice attributes; but they have long remained challenging to study empirically. Here, we summarize recent progress in the study of embodied decisions in sports analytics and experimental psychology. Furthermore, we introduce a formal methodology to identify the relevant dimensions of embodied choices (present and future affordances) and to map them into the attributes of classical economic decisions (probabilities and utilities), hence aligning them. Studying embodied decisions will greatly expand our understanding of what decision-making is.
Human performance requires choosing what to do and how to do it. The goal of this theoretical contribution is to advance understanding of how the motor and cognitive components of choices are intertwined. From a holistic perspective I extend simple heuristics that have been tested in cognitive tasks to motor tasks, coining the term motor heuristics. Similarly I extend the concept of embodied cognition, that has been tested in simple sensorimotor processes changing decisions, to complex sport behavior coining the term embodied choices. Thus both motor heuristics and embodied choices explain complex behavior such as studied in sport and exercise psychology.
A direct relationship between perception and action implies bi-directionality, and predicts not only effects of perception on action but also effects of action on perception. Modern theories of social cognition have intensively examined the relation from perception to action and propose that mirroring the observed actions of others underlies action understanding. Here, we suggest that this view is incomplete, as it neglects the perspective of the actor. We will review empirical evidence showing the effects of self-generated action on perceptual judgments. We propose that producing action might prime perception in a way that observers are selectively sensitive to related or similar actions of conspecifics. Therefore, perceptual resonance, not motor resonance, might be decisive for grounding sympathy and empathy and, thus, successful social interactions.
Handbook of embodied cognition and sport psychology
- M L Cappuccio
- Cappuccio M. L.
Cappuccio, M. L. (Ed.). (2019). Handbook of embodied cognition and sport psychology. MIT press.
Is social cognition embodied?
- A Goldman
- F De Vignemont
Goldman, A., & de Vignemont, F. (2009). Is social cognition embodied? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22(2), 481-505. https://doi.org/10.1080/1612197X.2023.2262483
A lifespan perspective on embodied cognition
- J Loeffler
- M Raab
- R Canãl-Bruland
Loeffler, J., Raab, M., & Canãl-Bruland, R. (2016). A lifespan perspective on embodied cognition. Frontiers in
Psychology, 7, 1-6. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00845