Anticipatory Judgments Research Articles

The Impact of Skill Level on the Integration of Information and Post-Error Adjustment during Action Anticipation in Basketball.

The present study examined the impact of skill level on the integration of contextual prior information and kinematic information alongside post-error adjustment during action anticipation in basketball. Twenty-three collegiate basketball players and twenty-three control participants engaged in anticipating as quickly and accurately as possible the outcomes of free throws, utilizing video clips depicting basketball players' actions, both with and without contextual prior information. Anticipatory performance and the difference in anticipatory performance following errors and correct responses were analyzed based on skill level and the congruency of contextual prior information (none, congruent, and incongruent). The findings revealed that the congruency of contextual prior information significantly affects action anticipation, with skill level moderating this effect. Moreover, skill level influenced the congruency effect on accuracy discrepancies between post-error and post-correct trials during action anticipation, with controls showing greater sensitivity to previous trial performance compared to experts. These results provide further evidence for the notion that individuals employ Bayesian reliability-based strategies to integrate different information sources and underscore the role of skill level in adjusting anticipatory judgments following errors during action anticipation. These insights contribute to a deeper understanding of the cognitive and behavioral mechanisms that differentiate skill levels in action anticipation, potentially guiding the development of targeted training interventions.

The effect of task load, information reliability and interdependency on anticipation performance

In sport, coaches often explicitly provide athletes with stable contextual information related to opponent action preferences to enhance anticipation performance. This information can be dependent on, or independent of, dynamic contextual information that only emerges during the sequence of play (e.g. opponent positioning). The interdependency between contextual information sources, and the associated cognitive demands of integrating information sources during anticipation, has not yet been systematically examined. We used a temporal occlusion paradigm to alter the reliability of contextual and kinematic information during the early, mid- and final phases of a two-versus-two soccer anticipation task. A dual-task paradigm was incorporated to investigate the impact of task load on skilled soccer players’ ability to integrate information and update their judgements in each phase. Across conditions, participants received no contextual information (control) or stable contextual information (opponent preferences) that was dependent on, or independent of, dynamic contextual information (opponent positioning). As predicted, participants used reliable contextual and kinematic information to enhance anticipation. Further exploratory analysis suggested that increased task load detrimentally affected anticipation accuracy but only when both reliable contextual and kinematic information were available for integration in the final phase. This effect was observed irrespective of whether the stable contextual information was dependent on, or independent of, dynamic contextual information. Findings suggest that updating anticipatory judgements in the final phase of a sequence of play based on the integration of reliable contextual and kinematic information requires cognitive resources.

Influence of conflicting prior information on action anticipation in soccer players: an ERP study.

Prior probability information and visual kinematic information are essential for action anticipation in athletes. The aims of this study were to examine how conflicting prior information influences anticipatory judgment in athletes vs. non-athletes and to explore the underlying cognitive mechanisms. The aim of Experiment 1 was to determine the moment when prior information influenced action anticipation in athletes vs. non-athletes. To that end, 17 semi-elite soccer goalkeepers and 18 non-athletes received prior information about the probability of the direction that a player on a video would kick a ball into the goal. Participants then anticipated the trajectory of the ball when the action of the player's kick on the video was truncated at the moment the foot contacted the ball (time T) or one frame (T-1; 50 ms) or two frames (T-2; 100 ms) before the foot-ball contact. The aim of Experiment 2 was to elucidate the adaptive cognitive-motor behavior exhibited by highly trained soccer players at the moment when their anticipatory performance was most influenced by prior information. Experiment 2 included 27 different semi-elite soccer players with many years of experience as a goalkeeper and 27 different non-athletes. Participants anticipated the direction of the kick when the kinematic action of the kicker at the moment the anticipatory performance of the participants was most influenced by prior information (as determined in Experiment 1) was congruent, incongruent, or neutral. Action anticipation accuracy and response time were evaluated for both experiments, whereas event-related potential components N1, N2, and P3 were assessed only in Experiment 2. The results of Experiment 1 showed that anticipatory accuracy was significantly higher among athletes than non-athletes and that anticipatory accuracy with directional information given was significantly higher than that when no prior information was given or when prior information without directional information was given (p < 0.001) for both T-1 (p's ≤ 0.034) and T-2 (p's < 0.001) occlusion points. In Experiment 2 using those two video occlusion times, the amplitude of the N1 component, which reflects selective attention to stimulus properties, was significantly higher in athletes than in non-athletes (p < 0.001). The amplitude of the N2 component, which has been associated with conflict monitoring, for the incongruent condition was significantly higher than that for both neutral (p < 0.001) and congruent (p < 0.001) conditions in athletes. Non-athletes exhibited no significant N2 amplitude differences for any prior information condition. Integrating prior information enhanced action anticipation in semi-elite soccer players, particularly 50 and 100 ms before the foot-ball contact. Semi-elite soccer players prioritized early selective attention and conflict monitoring of kinematic information, facilitating action anticipation using the prior information.

Relationships between the magnitude of representational momentum and the spatial and temporal anticipatory judgments of opponent's kicks in taekwondo.

For successful actions in a fast, dynamic environment such as sports, a quick successful anticipation of a forthcoming environmental state is essential. However, the perceptual mechanisms involved in successful anticipation are not fully understood. This study examined the relationships between the magnitude of representational momentum (RM) as a forward displacement of the memory representation of the final position of a moving object (which implies that observers perceptually "see" a near future forthcoming dynamic environmental state) and the temporal and spatial anticipatory judgments of the opponent's high or middle kicks in taekwondo. Twenty-seven participants (university taekwondo club members and non-members) observed video clips of taekwondo kicks that vanished at one of 10 frame positions prior to the kick impact and performed three tasks consecutively: anticipatory coincidence timing (CT) with the arrival of kick impact, judgment of the kick type (high and middle kicks) by forced choice, and judgment of the vanishing frame position (measuring RM). Our results showed significant group effects for the number of correct kick-type judgments and the judgment threshold for kick-type choice (kick-typeJT), which was estimated in terms of individual psychometric function curves. A significant correlation was found between the magnitude of RM (estimated at kick-typeJT) and kick-typeJT, but not between the CT errors (estimated at kick-typeJT) and kick-typeJT. This indicates that the magnitude of RM may play an influential role in quick kick-type judgments, but not in coincidence timing while observing an opponent's kick motion. These findings suggest that subjective anticipatory perception or judgment of the future spatial state is vital to anticipatory actions under severe time constraints.

Help-Seeking for Severe Intimate Partner Violence Among Sexual and Gender Minority Adolescents and Young Adults Assigned Female at birth: A Latent Class Analysis.

Sexual and gender minority adolescents and young adults assigned female at birth (SGM-AFAB) report high rates of intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization. Despite adverse health outcomes of IPV, many survivors, particularly SGM-AFAB, do not seek help. This study (1) examined the proportion of SGM-AFAB who reported severe IPV victimization who sought help; (2) elucidated patterns of help-seeking facilitators and barriers; and (3) identified associations between sociodemographic characteristics, IPV victimization types, and minority stressors and latent classes of help-seeking facilitators and barriers. Participants included 193 SGM-AFAB (Mage = 20.6, SD = 3.4; 65.8% non-monosexual; 73.1% cisgender; 72.5% racial/ethnic minority; 16.6% annual household income $20,000 or less). Most participants who experienced severe IPV did not seek help (62.2%). Having a person or provider who was aware of the participant's abusive relationship was the most common reason for seeking help (50; 68.5%). Minimizing IPV was the most common reason for not seeking help (103; 87.3%). Fewer than 5% of SGM-AFAB who experienced severe IPV and who did not seek help reported SGM-specific help-seeking barriers, including not wanting to contribute to negative perceptions of the LGBTQ community, not disclosing their SGM status, and perceiving a lack of tailored services. Help-seeking facilitators and barriers varied by sociodemographic characteristics. Three classes of help-seeking facilitators and two classes of help-seeking barriers emerged. SGM-AFAB subgroups based on sexual and gender identity, recent coercive control, and identity as IPV victims differed in latent classes. This study's findings confirm SGM-AFAB IPV survivors' low likelihood of seeking help. Our results also underscore the importance of continuing to bolster SGM-AFAB survivors' access to trauma-informed, culturally sensitive, and affirming support. Further, multilevel prevention and intervention efforts are needed to reduce minimization of abuse and anticipatory judgment and blame among SGM-AFAB who hold multiple marginalized identities, experience coercive control, and identify as IPV victims.

Context modulates the impact of auditory information on visual anticipation

Research on the impact of auditory information on visual anticipation in tennis suggests that the intensity of racket-ball-contact sounds systematically biases estimates of the ball’s speed, thereby influencing anticipatory judgments. Here we examined whether the effect of auditory information on visual anticipation is dependent on the sport-specific context in two separate experiments. In Exp. 1, participants watched short videos of tennis rallies that were occluded at racket-ball-contact. Racket-ball-contact sounds of the final shot were either present or absent. Participants faced different tasks in two counterbalanced blocks: In one block they estimated the ball’s speed; in the other block they indicated the ball’s landing location. Results showed that participants estimated longer ball flight trajectories and higher ball speeds in the sound present condition than in the sound absent condition. To probe whether this effect is dependent on the sport-specific context, Exp. 2 introduced an abstract (i.e., context-free) version of the previous stimuli. Based on the ball locations in the original videos used in Exp. 1, we rendered new videos that displayed only a moving circle against a blank background. Sine tones replaced the original racket-ball contact sounds. Results showed no impact of sound presence on location anticipation judgments. However, similar to Exp. 1, object speeds were judged to be faster when the final sound was present. Together, these findings suggest that the impact of auditory information on anticipation does not seem to be driven by sound alone, but to be moderated by contextual information.

A Bayesian computational model to investigate expert anticipation of a seemingly unpredictable ball bounce

During dynamic and time-constrained sporting tasks performers rely on both online perceptual information and prior contextual knowledge to make effective anticipatory judgments. It has been suggested that performers may integrate these sources of information in an approximately Bayesian fashion, by weighting available information sources according to their expected precision. In the present work, we extended Bayesian brain approaches to anticipation by using formal computational models to estimate how performers weighted different information sources when anticipating the bounce direction of a rugby ball. Both recreational (novice) and professional (expert) rugby players (n = 58) were asked to predict the bounce height of an oncoming rugby ball in a temporal occlusion paradigm. A computational model, based on a partially observable Markov decision process, was fitted to observed responses to estimate participants’ weighting of online sensory cues and prior beliefs about ball bounce height. The results showed that experts were more sensitive to online sensory information, but that neither experts nor novices relied heavily on prior beliefs about ball trajectories in this task. Experts, but not novices, were observed to down-weight priors in their anticipatory decisions as later and more precise visual cues emerged, as predicted by Bayesian and active inference accounts of perception.

Hand-related action words impair action anticipation in expert table tennis players: Behavioral and neural evidence.

Athletes extract kinematic information to anticipate action outcomes. Here, we examined the influence of linguistic information (experiment 1, 2) and its underlying neural correlates (experiment 2) on anticipatory judgment. Table tennis experts and novices remembered a hand- or leg-related verb or a spatial location while predicting the trajectory of a ball in a video occluded at the moment of the serve. Experiment 1 showed that predictions by experts were more accurate than novices, but experts' accuracy significantly decreased when hand-related words versus spatial locations were memorized. For nonoccluded videos with ball trajectories congruent or incongruent with server actions in experiment 2, remembering hand-related verbs shared cognitive resources with action anticipation only in experts, with heightened processing load (increased P3 amplitude) and more efficient conflict monitoring (decreased N2 amplitude) versus leg-related verbs. Thus, action anticipation required updating of motor representations facilitated by motor expertize but was also affected by effector-specific semantic representations of actions, suggesting a link from language to motor systems.

The combination of physical and mental load exacerbates the negative effect of each on the capability of skilled soccer players to anticipate action

ABSTRACT This study examined the impact of combining physical and mental load on the anticipatory judgements of skilled soccer players. Sixteen players completed an 11vs11 video anticipation test in four counterbalanced conditions, each separated by 7 days. The baseline condition consisted of only the anticipation test. A physical load condition required participants to complete a simulated soccer protocol on a treadmill followed by the anticipation test. A mental load condition required participants to complete a 30-min Stroop test followed by the anticipation test. Finally, in the combined load condition, participants completed the physical load protocol alongside the mentally loading Stroop task followed by the anticipation test. Response accuracy, visual search behaviour and measures of effort were assessed throughout. Response accuracy decreased in the separate physical load and mental load conditions when compared to baseline and worsened further in the combined load condition. The reduction in response accuracy across experimental conditions coincided with an increase in the number of fixations when compared to the baseline condition. It is suggested that the separate sources of load impaired the players ability to allocate sufficient resources to task-relevant information leading to a reduction in anticipatory accuracy, and this was exacerbated in the combined load condition.

Judgement utility modulates the use of explicit contextual priors and visual information during anticipation

ObjectivesWe examined the impact of judgement utility on the use of explicit contextual priors and visual information during action anticipation in soccer. DesignWe employed a repeated measures design, in which expert soccer players had to perform a video-based anticipation task under various conditions. MethodsThe task required the players to predict the direction (left or right) of an oncoming opponent’s imminent actions. Performance and verbal reports of thoughts from players were compared across three conditions. In two of the conditions, contextual priors pertaining to the opponent’s action tendencies (dribble = 70%; pass = 30%) were explicitly provided. In one of these experimental conditions, players were told that an incorrect ‘right’ response would result in conceding a goal, which created imbalanced judgement utility (left = high utility; right = low utility). In the third control condition, no explicit contextual priors or additional instructions were provided. ResultsThe explicit provision of contextual priors changed players’ processing priorities, biased their anticipatory judgements in accordance with the opponent’s action tendencies, and enhanced anticipation performance. These effects were suppressed under conditions in which the explicit contextual priors were accompanied by imbalanced judgement utility. Under these conditions, the players were more concerned about the consequences of their judgements and were more inclined to opt for the direction with the higher utility. ConclusionsIt appears that judgement utility disrupts the integration of contextual priors and visual information, which results in decreased impact of explicit contextual priors during action anticipation.

Effect of prior cues on action anticipation in soccer goalkeepers

ObjectivesVisual kinematic information is crucial to successful action anticipation in professional athletes. Here, we examined whether nonkinematic prior cues would influence the anticipatory judgment of penalty kicks and explored the neural correlates underlying expert advantage. MethodIn the cue-anticipation task, congruency was manipulated such that the direction of a prior cue (directional arrow) was either congruent (i.e., same direction) or incongruent (i.e., opposite direction) with the subsequent direction of the penalty kick. Both behavioral performance and event-related potential activity elicited by cues and kicks were compared between expert goalkeepers and novices. ResultsAction anticipation performance was increased in the congruent condition and was decreased in the incongruent condition. Expert goalkeepers outperformed novices both when the prior cue provided no directional information (neutral condition) and when it provided directional information incongruent, but not congruent, with the subsequent kick. Event-related potential activity analyses showed N1 and N2 amplitudes elicited by the kicks for the incongruent condition were larger than those for the congruent and neutral conditions only for expert goalkeepers. No significant difference was detected between experts and novices in the amplitude of the contingent negative variation elicited by the cues. ConclusionsIn addition to the contribution of visual kinematic body information on action anticipation, prior cues significantly influenced predictions of action outcome. Expert advantage of action anticipation may be associated with proficient modulation of brain activity in early attention processing and conflict monitoring during the integration of these two kinds of information.

Cumulative stigma among injured immigrant workers: a qualitative exploratory study in Montreal (Quebec, Canada)

Purpose: This paper presents the phenomenon of stigmatisation among injured immigrant and ethnocultural minority workers experiencing a long-standing disability. Stigmatisation was one of the main findings of our study, the aim of which was to gain insight into the work rehabilitation process in the context of intercultural relations in Quebec. Various categories of stakeholders took part in the study, which sought to describe their experiences and perspectives and to identify the constraints, barriers, facilitators, and specific needs they encounter in terms of intercultural competencies.Methods: A purposive sample of 40 individuals was selected and divided into four groups: workers (N = 9), clinicians (N = 15), workers’ compensation board rehabilitation experts (N = 14), and workplace representatives (N = 2). Semi-structured interviews were conducted using the critical incident technique, combined with an “explicitation” interviewing technique. Data collection and analysis procedures were based on grounded theory.Results: This study shows that immigrant and ethnocultural minority workers may experience stigmatisation as a cumulative process involving different concomitant parts of their “identity”: age, gender, social class, ethnicity, mental health, and occupational injuries. Cumulative stigma may aggravate personal distress and feelings of shame, rejection, and disqualification from full social acceptance. Negative anticipatory judgements made by practitioners may undermine the therapeutic relationship and breach mutual trust and confidence.Conclusions: The phenomenon of stigmatisation is well documented in the sociological and health literature, but studies tend to focus on only one type of stigma at a time. Future research should focus on the cumulative process of stigmatisation specifically affecting immigrant and ethnocultural minority workers and its potentially damaging impact on self-concept, healthcare delivery, rehabilitation interventions, and the return to work.Implications for rehabilitationThe repetition of certain clinical situations with people from certain groups should not lead practitioners to undue generalizations, even if they may sometimes be accurate; these generalizations must always be verified on a case by case basis.Ethnicity and culture, along with other social attributions, should serve as working hypotheses or support tools in health communication, not as hindrances to clinical reasoning.Practitioners should deepen their understanding of the patient’s treatment expectations and the support available for rehabilitation in his family and community.Stigma in the context of care is linked to the idea of conforming to the proposed institutional models of care (including expected beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours). Therefore, practitioners should be aware that alleged differences, misunderstanding or disagreements can highlight an asymmetry in practitioner–patient power relationships.Organisations should also promote exchange and reflection on how to adapt their institutional models to avoid asymmetrical power relations.Intercultural training should be promoted at the various organisational levels so that managers, decision-makers, and practitioners share a common knowledge of the challenges of intervention in multi-ethnic settings.

Experts integrate explicit contextual priors and environmental information to improve anticipation efficiency.

The understanding of how experts integrate prior situation-specific information (i.e., contextual priors) with emergent visual information when performing dynamic and temporally constrained tasks is limited. We used a soccer-based anticipation task to examine the ability of expert and novice players to integrate prior information about an opponent's action tendencies with unfolding environmental information such as opponent kinematics. We recorded gaze behaviors and ongoing expectations during task performance. Moreover, we assessed their final anticipatory judgments and perceived levels of cognitive effort invested. Explicit contextual priors biased the allocation of visual attention and shaped ongoing expectations in experts but not in novices. When the final action was congruent with the most likely action given the opponent's action tendencies, the contextual priors enhanced the final judgments for both groups. For incongruent trials, the explicit priors had a negative impact on the final judgments of novices but not experts. We interpreted the data using a Bayesian framework to provide novel insights into how contextual priors and dynamic environmental information are combined when making decisions under time pressure. Moreover, we provide evidence that this integration is governed by the temporal relevance of the information at hand as well as the ability to infer this relevance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Can Slow-Motion Footage of Forehand Strokes Be Used to Immediately Improve Anticipatory Judgments in Tennis?

Slow-motion footage of sports actions is widely used as a visual learning tool in observing the dynamic motor behaviors of athletes. Recent studies on action observation have reported that extending the observation time in slow-motion footage provides benefits of understanding the intention of an opponent’s action, at least when observing rapid movements. As such, the use of slow-motion footage may have the potential to improve the anticipatory judgments of an opponent’s action outcome without training (or feedback). To verify this possibility, we examined the effects of the replay speed of slow-motion footage on the anticipatory judgments of shot directions and recognition of kinematic positions of opponents’ forehand strokes in tennis. Nine skilled and nine novice tennis players were asked to anticipate the direction of their opponent’s shots (left or right) and then attempted to recognize proximal (trunk center) and distal (ball) kinematic positions. Computer graphic animations of forehand strokes were used as visual stimuli, which were presented at four different replay speeds (normal, three-quarter, half, and quarter speeds). We failed to show the immediate effect of the use of slow-motion footage on the anticipatory performance of the skilled and novice players, although the anticipatory performance of the skilled players was superior to that of the novice players. Instead, we found an effect of the use of slow-motion footage in terms of promoting recognition of important kinematic cues (trunk center) for effective anticipation by skilled players. Moreover, no significant correlations were observed between the anticipatory judgments and motion recognition in all experimental conditions. These results suggest that even if the use of slow-motion footage enhances the recognition of key kinematic cues, it may not immediately improve anticipatory judgments in tennis.

Anticipatory judgements associated with vision of an opponent's end-effector: An approach by motion perturbation and spatial occlusion.

This study was aimed at determining how the visual information of an end-effector (racket) and the intermediate extremity (arm) of a tennis server contribute to the receiver's anticipatory judgement of ball direction. In all, 15 experienced tennis players and 15 novice counterparts viewed a spatially occluded computer graphics animation of a tennis serve (no-occlusion, racket-occlusion, and body-occlusion) and made anticipatory judgements of ball direction on a visual analogue scale (VAS). The patterns of the serve motions were generated by a simulation technique that computationally perturbs the rotation speed of the selected racket-arm joint (forearm pronation and elbow extension) on a captured serve motion. The results suggested that the anticipatory judgements were monotonically attuned with the perturbation rate of the forearm pronation speed excepting under the conditions of the racket-occlusion model. Although such attunements were not observed in the elbow perturbation conditions, the results of correlation analysis indicated that the residual information in the spatially occluded models had a similar effect to the no-occlusion model within the individual experienced participants. The findings support the notion that end-effector (racket) provides deterministic cues for anticipation, as well as imply that players are able to benefit from the relative motion of an intermediate extremity (elbow extension).

Auditory contributions to visual anticipation in tennis

ObjectivesIt is well-known that visual information is crucial to successful anticipation in tennis. Here, we examine whether the sound of a tennis ball being struck by a racquet would influence anticipatory judgments of the ball's trajectory. DesignWithin videos of tennis rallies from the semi-final of the Australian Open 2016 between Djokovic and Federer, the intensity of the sounds produced when the racquet hit the ball were manipulated systematically. MethodsExperienced tennis players anticipated where the ball would land in the opponent's half. ResultsThe results highlight that the louder the sound of the contact between the racquet and ball, the longer participants predicted the ball's trajectory to be. ConclusionsThese findings demonstrate that besides the crucial contribution of vision to anticipation, action-related auditory cues can significantly influence predictions of the outcome of strokes in tennis as well.

The role of proximal body information on anticipatory judgment in tennis using graphical information richness.

ObjectiveRecent studies have reported that skilled tennis players are likely to use proximal body information for anticipating the direction of their opponent’s forehand shot. However, in these studies, the visual stimuli did not include visual information about the ball. Skilled players may have used proximal information owing to the lack of distal information. To address this issue, we developed a novel methodological approach using computer graphics (CG) images in which the entire body was presented by a combination of point-light display (i.e., poor graphical information, PLD) and polygons (i.e., rich graphical information). Using our novel methodological approach, we examined whether skilled tennis players use proximal body information when anticipating shot directions.Methods and resultsFifteen skilled tennis players and fifteen novice players tried to anticipate shot directions by observing four CG forehand strokes (ALPOL: all body parts were represented with polygon; RAPLD: racket and arm were represented with PLD; BOPLD: body parts without racket and arm were represented with PLD; and ALPLD: all body parts were represented with PLD). Our intention in creating CG models with such combinations (i.e., RAPLD and BOPLD) was that because of the richer graphical information provided by polygons compared to PLD, the participant’s anticipatory judgment would be influenced more by body parts expressed with polygons. The results showed that for skilled players, anticipatory judgment was more accurate when they observed RAPLD than when they observed BOPLD and ALPLD. In contrast, for novice players, there were no differences in the accuracy of anticipatory judgments with the four CG models.ConclusionsOnly skilled players made more accurate anticipatory judgments when body regions were expressed with rich graphical information, and the racket and arm were expressed with poor graphical information. These suggest that skilled players used proximal information to effectively anticipate shot directions.

The effect of a sequential structure of practice for the training of perceptual-cognitive skills in tennis.

ObjectiveAnticipation of opponent actions, through the use of advanced (i.e., pre-event) kinematic information, can be trained using video-based temporal occlusion. Typically, this involves isolated opponent skills/shots presented as trials in a random order. However, two different areas of research concerning representative task design and contextual (non-kinematic) information, suggest this structure of practice restricts expert performance. The aim of this study was to examine the effect of a sequential structure of practice during video-based training of anticipatory behavior in tennis, as well as the transfer of these skills to the performance environment.MethodsIn a pre-practice-retention-transfer design, participants viewed life-sized video of tennis rallies across practice in either a sequential order (sequential group), in which participants were exposed to opponent skills/shots in the order they occur in the sport, or a non-sequential (non-sequential group) random order.ResultsIn the video-based retention test, the sequential group was significantly more accurate in their anticipatory judgments when the retention condition replicated the sequential structure compared to the non-sequential group. In the non-sequential retention condition, the non-sequential group was more accurate than the sequential group. In the field-based transfer test, overall decision time was significantly faster in the sequential group compared to the non-sequential group.ConclusionFindings highlight the benefits of a sequential structure of practice for the transfer of anticipatory behavior in tennis. We discuss the role of contextual information, and the importance of representative task design, for the testing and training of perceptual-cognitive skills in sport.

Expertise differences in anticipatory judgements during a temporally and spatially occluded task.

There is contradictory evidence surrounding the role of critical cues in the successful anticipation of penalty kicks in soccer. In the current study, skilled and less-skilled soccer goalkeepers were required to anticipate when viewing penalty kicks that were both spatially (full body; hip region) and temporally (–160 ms, –80 ms before, foot–ball contact) occluded. The skilled group outperformed the less-skilled group in all conditions. Participants performed better in the full body condition when compared to hip region condition. Performance in the hip only condition was significantly better than chance for the skilled group across all occlusion conditions. However, the less-skilled group were no better than chance in the hip condition for the early occlusion points when predicting direction and height. Later temporal occlusion conditions were associated with increased performance both in the correct response and correct direction analyses, but not for correct height. These data suggest that postural information solely from the hip region may be used by skilled goalkeepers to make accurate predictions of penalty kick direction, however, information from other sources are needed in order to make predictions of height. Findings demonstrate how the importance of anticipation cues evolve over time, which has implications for the design of training programs to enhance perceptual-cognitive skill.

Contextual Interference Effect on Perceptual–Cognitive Skills Training

Contextual interference (CI) effect predicts that a random order of practice for multiple skills is superior for learning compared to a blocked order. We report a novel attempt to examine the CI effect during acquisition and transfer of anticipatory judgments from simulation training to an applied sport situation. Participants were required to anticipate tennis shots under either a random practice schedule or a blocked practice schedule. Response accuracy was recorded for both groups in pretest, during acquisition, and on a 7-d retention test. Transfer of learning was assessed through a field-based tennis protocol that attempted to assess performance in an applied sport setting. The random practice group had significantly higher response accuracy scores on the 7-d laboratory retention test compared to the blocked group. Moreover, during the transfer of anticipatory judgments to an applied sport situation, the decision times of the random practice group were significantly lower compared to the blocked group. The CI effect extends to the training of anticipatory judgments through simulation techniques. Furthermore, we demonstrate for the first time that the CI effect increases transfer of learning from simulation training to an applied sport task, highlighting the importance of using appropriate practice schedules during simulation training.