Perceptual Cognitive Processes Research Articles

Perception-action coupling in anticipation research: a classification and its application to racket sports.

Anticipation is key to performance in many sports. By definition, anticipation as a perceptual-cognitive process is meant to inform action and help athletes reduce potential motor costs under spatiotemporal pressure. Anticipation research has repeatedly been criticized for neglecting action and raised the need for predominant testing under conditions of perception-action coupling (PAC). To the best of our knowledge, however, there is a lack of explicit criteria to characterize and define PAC conditions. This can lead to blurred terminology and may complicate interpretation and comparability of PAC conditions and results across studies. Here, we make a first proposal for a 7-level classification of PAC conditions with the defining dimensions of stimulus presentation and response mode. We hope this classification may constitute a helpful orientation for study planning and reporting in research on anticipation. Further, we illustrate the potential utilization of the PAC classification as a template for experimental protocol analysis in a review on anticipation in racket sports. Analysis of N = 115 studies reported in N = 91 articles confirms an underrepresentation of representative PAC conditions and reveals little change in PAC approaches over more than 40 years of research in that domain. We discuss potential reasons for these findings, the benefits of adopting the proposed PAC classification and reiterate the call for more action in anticipation research.

Wooden furniture design based on physiological-psychological measurement technology and Kansei engineering: Taking Ming-style chair as an example

Psychological and physiological cognitive measurements were combined with Kansei engineering theory to study the shape of the traditional Chinese official-hat chair, a kind of Ming-style chairs, while investigating people’s perceptual cognitive process. This work employed focus groups to obtain 5 groups of representative words and 22 typical samples for evaluation experiments. After data preprocessing, principal component analysis (PCA) was used to extract three main components: “Concise-Ornate”, “Soft-Strong”, and “Elegant-Vulgar”. In terms of component weight calculation, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was initially used to calculate the subjective cognitive weight of different components, and then eye-tracking technology was used to assist in calculating the physiological cognitive weight. Finally, combining the subjective and objective weights, the weights of the components were determined as: backrest (41.02%) > stretcher (18.29%) > handrail (11.64%) > top rail (11.14%) > outside stick (8.64%) > inside stick (5.32%) > foot rail (3.95%). The four main components—backrest, stretcher, handrail, and top rail—along with perceptual image evaluations, were selected to establish a multivariate linear regression equation, thereby constructing a mathematical mapping relationship between perceptual image and main design elements. This provides theoretical support for designers in creating different perceptual images.

Ecological dynamics approach in physical education to promote cognitive skills development

The aim of this paper is to carry out a theoretical transposition of the principles of the ecological dynamic approach in the field of physical and sports education, aimed at defining educational approaches capable of promoting an effective acquisition of cognitive skills, through the practice of physical activity and sport. Physical education, according to an ecological dynamics perspective, considers the performer a complex adaptive system, which interacts with the environments in a functionally integrated way, underlining the interrelationship between motor processes, cognitive and perceptive functions. The cognitive area of Life Skills (Cognitive Life Skills, CLS), divided by the WHO, into decision making, problem solving, creative thinking and critical thinking processes, can be framed as an intrinsic part of goal-directed behaviour influenced by functional constraints determined by individual-environment interaction. Therefore, physical and sport activity practiced according to the principles of the ecological dynamic approach can be configured as an elective tool to promote the development of cognitive skills. In this article, the relevant theories of ecological dynamics are discussed and recent empirical data on the perceptual-cognitive processes which are activated through the practice of physical education and sport are described to underline the potential of such practices for the development of cognitive skills. The development of this specific theoretical transposition represents a starting point for the definition and experimentation of ecological dynamic interventions designed with the aim of investigating the effects of physical and sporting activity on the development of cognitive skills for life.

Interplay Between Cognition and Emotion: Unravelling the Mind Complexity

To understand human behavior and mental health, one must understand the complex interplay between cognition and emotion. The cognitive processes of perception, attention, memory, and decision-making, as well as the affective states, mood, and subjective experiences associated with emotions, are often regarded as distinct entities. However, new research shows that cognitive processes are strongly linked to emotional experiences and vice versa. To comprehend the complex relationship between cognition and emotion, this research article examines its importance, mechanisms, and prospective effects on psychological well-being. The complex relationship between cognition and emotion is examined using dual-process theories, appraisal theory, embodied cognition, and neurocognitive models. According to this study, attentional biases and cognitive reappraisal alter emotional experiences and reactions. It explores how emotional states affect cognitive performance, notably attention allocation, memory encoding, and decision-making. This study also investigates the neurological systems that link cognition and emotion, highlighting the prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and hippocampus. To study cognitive-emotional relationships, neuroimaging, behavioral experiments, and computer modeling are used. By understanding the complex link between cognition and emotion, this research advances strategies to improve cognitive-emotional dysregulation and mental health. The utilization of conclusions can serve to elucidate psychopathology, formulate therapeutic approaches, and foster resilience in the face of adversity. The examination of the relation between cognition and emotion holds significant importance in comprehending human behavior and mental well-being, and this research delves into this subject comprehensively.

Autism Perceptual – Behavioural Precision Scale

The Perceptual-Cognitive-Behavioural Diagnostic Precision Scale for Autism Spectrum Disorder allows to complement the analysis of the autism diagnosis through the measurement of variables the neuropsychological processing of human information to avoid high errors over ASD diagnosis currently existing, derived from unilateral analysis of the behaviour criteria component of the actual Scales. The empirical scoring of the Scale has been verified to N= 75, being 38 participants belonging to the TEA-1 level, 24 to TEA-2 and 13 to TEA-3, has allowed find a statistical reliability of Cronbach's Alpha average greater to .91 in the ten dimensions of the Scale: 1) comprehension, 2) significant, 3) categories, 4) intercategorical 5) relationships-neural-nodes, 6) semantic recovery, 7) social interaction, 8) social communication, 9) stereotyped behaviours, and 10) restrictive behaviours. These ten dimensions have been statistically grouped around three great categories to analysis: 1) perceptual-cognitive processing, 2) social interaction, and 3) behaviour. The conclusive statistical analyses indicate that perceptual-cognitive process category explains 88.52% of total accumulated explicative variance, social category: 10.19% and behaviour: 1.28%; which shows the importance of the perceptual-cognitive dimensional factor analysis, in order to conclude with the mean percentiles of the diagnostic conclusion regarding each ASD´ level, according to International Classification of the American Psychiatric Association DSM-5 (APA, 2023).

The vigor law as a kinematic invariant at work in perceptual-cognitive processes: Comment on "Motor invariants in action execution and perception" by Francesco Torricelli et al.

Cake-cutting is a metaphor for problems where a principal agent has to fairly allocate resources. Such problems cover various areas of operations research and management science, like, for instance, shift scheduling with employees' preferences. Recent work focuses on optimizing social efficiency while guaranteeing fairness, but ignore incentive-compatibility constraints, or vice versa. In this paper, we present a new approach to heuristic mechanism design with Bayesian incentive-compatibility. As opposed to other papers, we do not allow monetary transfer. Our approach relies on the revelation principle and the computation of Bayesian–Nash equilibria using the so-called return function. This computation consists in tracking a best-reply dynamics of return function, which are mappings of action to probability distribution on outcomes, instead of the more classical but harder-to-compute best-reply dynamics of strategies. In essence, our mechanism-design approach explores a parameterized class of revelation mechanisms, which we know by construction to be Bayesian incentive-compatible. We highlight the efficiency of this approach through numerical results on instances of respectively 2, 5 and 20 agents.

Creativity and gaze behaviour in football

Performing creative actions is considered a decisive element in football. Recent studies have suggested that football players’ creativity is underpinned by a specific visual search strategy (e.g., Roca et al., 2021). Specifically, studies showed that players who scored high in a football-specific creativity task used more fixations of shorter durations than players who scored low. In the creativity task, players were asked to name as many solution ideas as possible. From an applied perspective, the questions arise: is this gaze strategy generally beneficial to perform creative actions? Should this gaze pattern be trained to improve creativity?
 In contrast to the idea of one single creativity-related gaze pattern, eye-tracking research in sports suggests that optimal gaze behaviour is highly dependent on situational task demands (Vater et al., 2020). Moreover, generally increasing the number of short fixations is expected to be dysfunctional to both motor accuracy and to the perception of task-relevant opportunities due to saccade-related costs. Accordingly, we hypothesized that many fixations of short duration are positively associated with players’ ability to generate many ideas in the specific creativity task but not with performing creative actions.
 Fifteen footballers participated in an experiment with two conditions. In one condition (DT-condition), we replicated Roca et al.’s studies: participants stood in front of a large screen and with a ball in front of them. They were asked to view 20 videos of attacking situations and imagine themselves as the player in ball possession. At key moments of the situation, the videos were occluded. At this point, players’ task was to physically play the ball and verbally confirm their decision. Subsequently, the last frame of the video reappeared, and their task was to name as many solution ideas as possible within 45 s. Moreover, a second condition was added (action-condition). While the first part of the task remained identical, the last frame did not reappear after playing the ball. In the action condition, the task-instruction was—as in a real game—to perform the most promising solution. In both conditions, eye tracking data were recorded.
 Results indicate that many fixations of short durations were linked to generating more ideas in the DT-condition—replicating Roca et al.’s (2021) finding—, however, not with performing creative solutions in the action-condition. As predicted, in the action-condition, the pattern was reversed: Players that performed more functional and creative actions used less fixations per second. For practice the results challenge the idea of training a specific creativity-related gaze pattern to improve creativity. Rather, our findings suggest that training should provide learning opportunities to acquire functional gaze strategies that are optimally adapted to situational task demands.
 References
 Roca, A., Ford, P. R., & Memmert, D. (2021). Perceptual-cognitive processes underlying creative expert performance in soccer. Psychological Research, 85(3), 1146–1155. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-020-01320-5
 Vater, C., Williams, A. M., & Hossner, E.-J. (2020). What do we see out of the corner of our eye? The role of visual pivots and gaze anchors in sport. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 13(1), 81–103. https://doi.org/10.1080/1750984X.2019.1582082

Incidence of cognitive processing dimension for the diagnostic reliability of level-1 autism spectrum disorder

Diagnostic processes of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) just based over the observation of target- behaviors, regarding to interaction and social communication (social) and restrictive behavior (behavior), seem be most effective for level 2-3 ASD specific diagnosis; however, level 1 ASD diagnosis may be many errors, since the scores sum are within limits corresponding the other specific personality or social communication disorders (American Psychiatric Association (APA), 2013). For this reason, it´s needs complement the analysis of variables that make up the perceptual- cognitive dimension of information processing to specify the diagnosis validity and avoid initial errors that can create important prejudices along educational processes. This study delimits the differential analysis of 3 dimensions on total of 38 participants with level 1 ASD. Indeed, results indicate that, although the constant of diagnostic predictive analysis found through the linear regression analysis shows significant data for diagnosis synthesis, it´s owing to critical influence of cognitive processing dimension: .00, while other 2 dimensions analyzed individually show non-significant influence, being critical significant level for social dimension: .12 and behavior dimension: .35. Therefore, it´s need design diagnostic scales that include the basic principles of perceptual-cognitive processing functioning to avoid errors in autism diagnosis.

Social Media Discourse: Intensional Approach

Social media is a new reality of modern society and represent as a platform of online communication of millions of people. During the discussion reflection of current events is happening, positions of communication’s subjects on topical issues are forming and changing, impact is made. Definition of intentional characteristics of network discourse related to motivational, perceptual-cognitive processes, communicants’ practical activity becomes particularly relevant in this regard. The approach realized in this study is aimed at characterizing the intentional space of social media discourse and identifying discursive markers of Internet users’ actual intentions, suitable for their objective evaluation. 46 messages of various topics and their discussion (1835 comments) on various network resources in 2015–2022 are served as the material for our study. Intent-analysis is used to assess psychological content of speech. This method allows to determine communicators’ intentions associated with current interaction and communicative tactics. 51 categories of intentions are described (4947 realizations). High intensity negative intentions dominate among them regardless of their topics that points to pronounced negative evaluability and potential conflictuality. In addition, social media discourse has clear informational focus due to extensive representation of neutral intentions associated with exchange of opinions, analysis and discussion of the situation. Context specific markers of communicators’ intentions: lexical, semantic, graphic and punctuation are found in it. Some markers are specific to certain intentions; others are realized in actualization of a number of intentions that associated with the variety of expression ways and words’ multiple meanings.

Altered Cerebral Processing of Videos in Children with Motor Dysfunction Suggests Broad Embodiment of Perceptual Cognitive Functions

Embodied cognition theory suggests that motor dysfunctions affect cognition. We examined this hypothesis by inspecting whether cerebral processing of movies, featuring both goal-directed movements and content without humans, differ between children with congenital motor dysfunction and healthy controls. Electroencephalography was recorded from 23 healthy children and 23 children with limited or absent arm movement due to either arthrogryposis multiplex congenita or obstetric brachial plexus palsy. Each individual patient exhibited divergent neural responses, disclosed by significantly lower inter-subject correlation (ISC) of brain activity, during the videos compared to the healthy children. We failed to observe associations between this finding and the motor-related content of the various video scenes, suggesting that differences between the patients and controls reflect modulation of perceptual-cognitive processing of videos by upper-limb motor dysfunctions not limited to the watching-mirroring of motor actions. Thus, perceptual-cognitive processes in the brain seem to be more robustly embodied than has previously been thought.

Shortening pre-hospital time delay in patients with acute myocardial infarction using a modelling-based narrative intervention with a virtual heart attack experience: a randomized controlled trial

Abstract Background Prolonged delay in seeking treatment by patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) remains a significant therapeutic gap. Previous mass-media campaigns or brief educational interventions were largely ineffective in shortening pre-hospital patient delay. The brevity and didactic nature of these interventions are inadequate to address complex decision-making encountered by patients with AMI. Purpose This randomized controlled trial examined the effects of a theory-driven modelling-based narrative intervention on AMI knowledge, care-seeking intention as indicated by attitudes and beliefs regarding care-seeking for AMI, prehospital delay time and use of ambulance among AMI survivors. Methods A total of 285 of patients with history of at least one AMI were randomized 1:1 to modelling-based narrative intervention (n=144) and control with didactic education (n=141). The modelling-based narrative intervention comprised 4 weekly group-based interactive sessions to engage participants in mental rehearsals of the perceptual-cognitive processes in recognizing and responding to AMI symptoms through a virtual heart attack experience, then followed by a booster session one month later The control group received a 4-weekly education on factual information about AMI with traditional didactic education approach. Study endpoints included AMI knowledge, attitudes and belief about care-seeking for AMI to be measured at baseline, (T0), 3 months (T1), 12 months (T2) and 24 months (T3) after the intervention. Prehospital delay time and use of ambulance for an AMI attack were tracked since patients' enrolment until T3 endpoint of the study. Results Generalized estimating equation analysis indicated that the participants in the intervention group had significantly greater improvement in attitudes and beliefs about care seeking for AMI symptoms at all endpoints than those in the control group (Table 1). There were no between-group differences in the change of AMI knowledge score over the baseline and 3- or 12-month endpoints, such difference became significant at 24-month endpoint. A total of 78 participants, including 38 (26.4%) in the intervention group and 40 (28.4%) in the control groups, had experienced AMI symptoms and admitted to an emergency department during the follow-up period. The participants in the intervention group showed significant reduction in prehospital delay time than the control group (p=0.031). There was no between-group difference on use of ambulance (p=0.422) for those participants who had symptom attack during the follow-up period. Conclusion This study demonstrated favorable effects in shortening prehospital time delay and promoting positive attitudes and beliefs regarding care-seeking for AMI symptoms among AMI survivors. A virtual heart attack experience helped support them through a cognitive-perceptual processes in recognizing and interpreting AMI symptoms. Funding Acknowledgement Type of funding sources: Public grant(s) – National budget only. Main funding source(s): Early Career Scheme, Research Grants Council, Hong Kong

Assessing Visual Exploratory Activity of Athletes in Virtual Reality Using Head Motion Characteristics.

Maximizing performance success in sports is about continuous learning and adaptation processes. Aside from physiological, technical and emotional performance factors, previous research focused on perceptual skills, revealing their importance for decision-making. This includes deriving relevant environmental information as a result of eye, head and body movement interaction. However, to evaluate visual exploratory activity (VEA), generally utilized laboratory settings have restrictions that disregard the representativeness of assessment environments and/or decouple coherent cognitive and motor tasks. In vivo studies, however, are costly and hard to reproduce. Furthermore, the application of elaborate methods like eye tracking are cumbersome to implement and necessitate expert knowledge to interpret results correctly. In this paper, we introduce a virtual reality-based reproducible assessment method allowing the evaluation of VEA. To give insights into perceptual-cognitive processes, an easily interpretable head movement-based metric, quantifying VEA of athletes, is investigated. Our results align with comparable in vivo experiments and consequently extend them by showing the validity of the implemented approach as well as the use of virtual reality to determine characteristics among different skill levels. The findings imply that the developed method could provide accurate assessments while improving the control, validity and interpretability, which in turn informs future research and developments.

Специфика нарушений процессов зрительного восприятия и мышления и их взаимосвязь с функциональным состоянием магно-и парвоцеллюлярных нейронных систем при шизофрении

The article examines the relationship between cognitive processes of perception and thinking in schizophrenia. An analysis of the functional state of the magnocellular and parvocellular visual systems, the specificity of their interaction was carried out. New data were obtained on the relationship between the mechanisms of global and local analysis of visual information and cognitive impairments in schizophrenia. The contribution of magnocellular and parvocellular systems (mechanisms of global and local analysis) in the implementation of the thinking processes has been discovered. It has been established that the activity of the magnocellular system is associated with the processes of abstraction and generalization. However, hyperactivation of the magnocellular system leads to a violation of the selectivity and goal setting in the thinking process. A decrease in the activity of the parvocellular system in patients with schizophrenia leads to distortions of the generalization process, an increase in the number of “latent” signs in the thinking process. The study obtained results that allow us to state that early sensory deficits are closely interrelated with the level and nature of the functioning of more highly organized cognitive processes. Sensory deficits identified in schizophrenia lead to higher-level cognitive deficits and are a key link in the structure of neurocognitive deficits in schizophrenia.

The association between perceptual-cognitive processes and response time in decision making in young soccer players

ABSTRACT In soccer, it is relevant to understand the roles of Systems 1 (intuitive) and 2 (deliberative) in perceptual-cognitive processes and how they influence response time when making decisions. The aim of this study was to analyse how response time in decision making managed by Systems 1 and 2 is associated to the perceptual-cognitive processes of young soccer players. Ninety young soccer players participated. Perceptual-cognitive processes were assessed through visual search strategies, cognitive effort, and verbal reports. Participants wore a mobile-eye tracking system while viewing 11-a-side match play video-based soccer simulations. Response time in decision making was used to create two sub-groups: faster and slower decision-makers. Results indicated that players with faster response time in decision making employed more fixations of shorter duration, displayed less cognitive effort, as well as a greater number of thought processes associated with planning. These results reinforce that there are differences in the way of using the perceptive-cognitive processes from the priority system in the decision-making process. It is concluded that faster decision making, managed by System 1, implies greater ability to employ visual search strategies and to process information, thus enabling increased cognitive efficiency.

Seeing isn't necessarily believing: Misleading contextual information influences perceptual-cognitive bias in radiologists.

A substantial number of medical errors in radiology are attributed to failures of perception or decision making, although it is believed that experience (or expertise) might buffer diagnosticians from some types of perceptual-cognitive bias. We examined how the quality of contextual information influences decision making and how underlying perceptual-cognitive processes change as a function of experience and diagnostic accuracy. Twenty-one radiologists dictated their findings on 16 deidentified musculoskeletal radiographic cases while wearing a mobile-eye tracking system. Patient histories were mismatched on a subset of cases to be miscued relative to the correct diagnosis. Experienced radiologists outperformed less-experienced participants, but no systematic differences in gaze behaviors emerged between groups. Miscued case notes increased perceptual-cognitive bias in both groups, resulting in an approximate 40% decrease in diagnostic accuracy. Most errors were judgment errors, meaning participants visually fixated on the abnormality for longer than a second yet still failed to make the correct diagnosis. Findings suggest a physician's confidence in their diagnosis might be misplaced after spending insufficient time extracting relevant information from key areas of the visual display, or when decisions are based primarily on a priori expectations derived from patient histories. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

The Visual Search Strategies Underpinning Effective Observational Analysis in the Coaching of Climbing Movement.

Despite the importance of effective observational analysis in coaching the technical aspects of climbing performance, limited research informs this aspect of climbing coach education. Thus, the purpose of the present research was to explore the feasibility and the utility of a novel methodology, combining eye tracking technology and cued retrospective think-aloud (RTA), to capture the cognitive–perceptual mechanisms that underpin the visual search behaviors of climbing coaches. An analysis of gaze data revealed that expert climbing coaches demonstrate fewer fixations of greater duration and fixate on distinctly different areas of the visual display than their novice counterparts. Cued RTA further demonstrated differences in the cognitive–perceptual mechanisms underpinning these visual search strategies, with expert coaches being more cognizant of their visual search strategy. To expand, the gaze behavior of expert climbing coaches was underpinned by hierarchical and complex knowledge structures relating to the principles of climbing movement. This enabled the expert coaches to actively focus on the most relevant aspects of a climber’s performance for analysis. The findings demonstrate the utility of combining eye tracking and cued RTA interviewing as a new, efficient methodology of capturing the cognitive–perceptual processes of climbing coaches to inform coaching education/strategies.

Functional Neuroanatomy of the Human Accommodation Response to an "E" Target Varying from -3 to -6 Diopters.

Background: We aimed to identify the functional brain networks involved in the regulation of visual accommodation by contrasting the cortical functional areas evoked by foveal fixation to an “E” target, which were subservient to the accommodation responses to a -3/-6 diopter stimulus.Methods: Neural activity was assessed in healthy volunteers by changes in blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signals measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Twenty-five right-handed subjects viewed the “E” target presented in a hierarchical block design. They participated in two monocular tasks: (i) sustained foveal fixation upon an “E” target on a white background at 33 cm (-3.03D accommodative demand); and (ii) sustained fixation through an attached -3D concave lens (-6D accommodative demand) in front of the fixated eye; each condition cycled through a standard alternating 30-s eye open/30-s eye closed design to provide the BOLD contrast. The total sustained period was 480 s.Results: The contrast between the -3D and the rest condition revealed activation in the occipital lobe (Lingual gyrus, Cuneus, Calcarine_L, and Calcarine_R); cerebellum (Cerebellum_Crus1_L and Cerebellum_6_L); precentral lobe (Precentral_R); frontal lobe (Frontal_Inf_Oper_R and Frontal_Mid_R); and cingulate cortex (Cingulum_Ant_L). With the -3D concave lenses (-6D accommodative demand) in front of the fixated eye, the voxel size and peak intensity of activation in the occipital lobe and cerebellum were greater than with the -3D accommodative demand; emergent activated brain areas included the parietal lobe (bilateral precuneus gyrus and right supramarginal gyrus); the precentral lobe and cingulate cortex failed to reach the threshold in the -6D vs. rest contrast. In the -3D and -6D contrast comparison, the frontal lobe (Frontal_Sup_Medial_L) and parietal lobe (Precuneus_L and Precuneus_R) passed the significance threshold of cluster-level family-wise error (FWE) correction. The mean activation in the -3D and -6D contrast revealed an incremental summation of the activations than that found in the previous -3D vs. rest and -6D vs. rest comparisons.Conclusions: Neural circuits were selectively activated during the -3D/-6D accommodative response to blur cues. Cognitive-perceptual processing is involved in signal regulation of ocular accommodative functions.

M5. A MULTIMODAL STUDY ON THE INFLUENCE OF LEFT-BEHIND CHILDREN’S VISUAL PERCEPTION PROCESSING

BackgroundLeft-behind children（LBC has experienced parent-child separation, which is a special parent-child separation and social isolation model. Adverse events in early development may have important effects on the development of the nervous system, including the influence on sensory and perceptual cognitive processing, thus increasing the susceptibility to mental illness. Meanwhile, there are various neurological and brain root causes behind left-behind children’s learning difficulties, non-socialization and other psychological behavior problems. In addition, left-behind may have sensory, perceptual and cognitive processing abnormalities. This study tries to elaborate and extract the eye movement characteristics of left-behind children, lay a foundation for the discussion of the mechanism of abnormal visual processing, and provide a scientific basis for follow-up of left-behind children and the early identification, prevention and control of mental diseases.MethodsThe standards for grouping left-behind children are as follows: the children who are separated from both parents 6 months after birth and spend less than 2 months with their parents each month, and the non-left-behind children with matched gender, age and education years, exclusion criteria is: neurological diseases, family history of mental illness, broken family (single parent, bereavement), high myopia (greater than 1000 degrees), eye and eyelash cannot be identified by infrared light. EyeControl portable eye movement tester (built-in infrared, speed: 100Hz, error <0.5°) developed by Qingtech and its software processing system were used. The subjects’ eye movements and various analysis indexes in various tasks were collected. The eye movement indexes of smooth pursuit eye movement, fixation stability and free browsing were collected, so as to investigate the effects of left-behind on static attention retention, visual tracking and face recognition in social scenes.ResultsAmong the 175 children, the smooth tracking mean deviation of LBC is significantly increased (P=0.017). The mean deviation of the O and S-curve tracking of the LBC is significantly increased (P=0.018; P=0.034), and the OS curve mean deviation and hyperactivity correlated (r=-0.273, P=0.011). In terms of the time that peak deviation takes (F=4.329, P=0.014), there is significant interaction between the age groups and the left-behind groups. In the social scenes, the first fixation time of face (P=0.039), the number of eye entry count (P=0.020), and the eye fixation time (P=0.003) of LBC are all significantly reduced, and the number of mouth entry count (P=0.007) and the number of fixation (P=0.023) of LBC are all significantly increased. Under the circumstance of low facial processing, there is a significant difference between LBC and NLBC (P=0.009), and that difference is not significant under the circumstance of high facial processing, and there is a significant difference between low facial processing LBC and high facial processing NLBC (P=0.007).DiscussionLeft-behind children have obstacles in dynamic visual information processing, insufficient inhibition and control, and poor cognitive flexibility, which may be related to hyperactivity. The attention retention in visual tracking decreased with the increase of age. Left-behind children have difficulties in face recognition in social scenes. In the case of low facial processing, left-behind children aggravated the defects of speech comprehension, while in the case of high facial processing, left-behind children had no significant influence on speech comprehension. Therefore, we should intervene the left-behind children in the early days, and this study provides a scientific basis for the formulation of social policies.

Perceptual-cognitive processes underlying creative expert performance in soccer.

Creativity is one of the key parts of expert performance in sport and other domains. The aim of this study was to determine the underlying perceptual and cognitive processes that underpin creative expert performance in the sport of soccer. Forty skilled adult soccer players participated. In the experimental task, they interacted with representative video-based 11 vs. 11 attacking situations whilst in possession of a ball. Clips were occluded at a key moment and participants were required to play the ball in response to each presented scenario as they would in a real-game situation. Moreover, they were required to name other additional actions they could execute for each situation. Their solutions on the task were measured using the three observation criteria for creativity of originality, flexibility, and fluency of decisions. Using these criteria, players were categorized into either high- or low-creative groups. Visual search and cognitive thought processes were recorded during the task using a portable eye-movement registration system and retrospective verbal reports. The creativity-based between-group differences in decision making were underpinned by differences in visual search strategy. Compared to the low-creative group, the high-creative players made more fixations of shorter duration in a different sequential order and to more task-relevant locations of the display, indicating a broader attentional focus. They also generated a greater number of verbal reports of thoughts related to the assessment of the current task situation and planning of future decisions when compared with the low-creative players. Our findings highlight the perceptual-cognitive processes that underlie creative expert performance in a sport-specific domain.

Exploring Cognitive and Perceptual Judgment Processes in Gymnastics Using Essential Kinematics Information.

The aim of the current study was to transfer the method of using isolated kinematics information combined with the examination of perceptual-cognitive processes to gymnastics judging and thereby investigating the informational underpinnings of skilled perception and judgment. More specifically, a combination of process-tracing methods that include both the gaze pattern (via eye tracking) and the performance judgment (via ratings on a six-point Likert scale) of participants with different gymnastics expertise (visual experts, n = 14, motor experts, n = 17, novices, n = 18) was employed for gymnastics performances of a floor routine (round off, back handspring, back layout somersault), which were shown as videos in original or in stick-figure format. Gaze pattern was analyzed for the whole floor routine as well as for the particular temporal-spatial windows of the three motor skills. Differences between visual experts, motor experts, and novices could be found concerning the judgment score, ηp2 = .242, and the judgment accuracy, ηp2 = .196, but not the gaze pattern. The significant interaction effects between skill and format for the gaze pattern show the importance of the last skill in the judgment processes. Further research should investigate the influence of judgment instruction on the gaze pattern as well as the importance of the last skill for the judgment score.