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A Look Inside the Mind of the Athlete
Dan Peterson
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- October 4, 2008
- 07:40 AM
- 1,173 views
The Big Mo' - Momentum In Sports
by Dan Peterson in Sports Are 80 Percent Mental
A player can feel it during a game when they hit a game-changing home run or when they go 0 for 4 at the plate. A team can feel it when they come back from a deficit late in the game or when their lead in the division vanishes. A fan can feel it as their team "catches fire" or goes "as cold as ice". And, play-by-play announcers love to talk about it. We know it as the "Big Mo", the "Hot Hand", and being "In The Zone" while the psychologists call it Psychological Momentum. But, does it really exist? Is it just a temporary shift in confidence and mood or does it actually change the outcome of a game or a season? As expected, there are lots of opinions available.The Oxford Dictionary of Sports Science defines psychological momentum as, "the positive or negative change in cognition, affect, physiology, and behavior caused by an event or series of events that affects either the perceptions of the competitors or, perhaps, the quality of performance and the outcome of the competition. Positive momentum is associated with periods of competition, such as a winning streak, in which everything seems to ‘go right’ for the competitors. In contrast, negative momentum is associated with periods, such as a losing streak, when everything seems to ‘go wrong’." The interesting phrase in this definition is that Psychological Momentum (PM) "affects either the perceptions of the competitors or, perhaps, the quality of performance and the outcome of the competition." Most of the analyses on PM focus on the quantitative side to try to prove or disprove PM's affect on individual stats or team wins and losses.Regarding PM in baseball, a Wall St. Journal article looked at last year's MLB playoffs, only to conclude there was no affect on postseason play coming from team momentum at the end of the regular season. More recently, Another Cubs Blog also looked at momentum into this year's playoffs including opinion from baseball stats guru, Bill James, another PM buster. For basketball, Thomas Gilovich's 1985 research into streaky, "hot hand" NBA shooting is the foundation for most of today's arguments against the existence of PM, or at least its affect on outcomes.This view that if we can't see it in the numbers, more than would be expected, then PM does not exist may not capture the whole picture. Lee Crust and Mark Nesti have recommended that researchers look at psychological momentum more from the qualitative side. Maybe there are more subjective measures of athlete or team confidence that contribute to success that don't show up in individual stats or account for teams wins and losses. As Jeff Greenwald put it in his article, Riding the Wave of Momentum, "The reason momentum is so powerful is because of the heightened sense of confidence it gives us -- the most important aspect of peak performance. There is a term in sport psychology known as self-efficacy, which is simply a player's belief in his/her ability to perform a specific task or shot. Typically, a player’s success depends on this efficacy. During a momentum shift, self-efficacy is very high and players have immediate proof their ability matches the challenge. As stated earlier, they then experience subsequent increases in energy and motivation, and gain a feeling of control. In addition, during a positive momentum shift, a player’s self-image also changes. He/she feels invincible and this takes the "performer self" to a higher level."There would seem to be three distinct areas of focus for PM; an individual's performance within a game, a team's performance within a game and a team's performance across a series of games. So, what are the relationships between these three scenarios? Does one player's scoring streak or key play lift the team's PM, or does a close, hard-fought team win rally the players' morale and confidence for the next game? Seeing the need for a conceptual framework to cover all of these bases, Jim Taylor and Andrew Demick created their Multidimensional Model of Momentum in Sports, which is still the most widely cited model for PM. Their definition of PM, "a positive or negative change in cognition, affect, physiology, and behavior caused by an event or series of events that will result in a commensurate shift in performance and competitive outcome", leads to the six key elements to what they call the "momentum chain".First, momentum shifts begin with a "precipitating event", like an interception or fumble recovery in football or a dramatic 3-point shot in basketball. The effect that this event has on each athlete varies depending on their own perception of the game situation, their self-confidence and level of self-efficacy to control the situation.Second, this event leads to "changes in cognition, physiology, and affect." Again, depending on the athlete, his or her base confidence will determine how strongly they react to the events, to the point of having physiological changes like tightness and panic in negative situations or a feeling of renewed energy after positive events.Third, a "change in behavior" would come from all of these internal perceptions. Coaches and fans would be able to see real changes in the style of play from the players as they react to the positive or negative momentum chain.Fourth, the next logical step after behavior changes is to notice a "change in performance." Taylor and Demick note that momentum is the exception not the norm during a game. Without the precipitating event, there should not be noticeable momentum shifts.Fifth, for sports with head to head competition, momentum is a two-way street and needs a "contiguous and opposing change for the opponent." So, if after a goal, the attacking team celebrates some increased PM, but the defending team does not experience an equal negative PM, then the immediate flow of the game should remain the same. Its only when the balance of momentum shifts from one team to the other. Levels of experience in athletes has been shown to mitigate the effects of momentum, as veteran players can handle the ups and downs of a game better than novices.Finally, at the end of the chain, if momentum makes it that far, there should be an immediate outcome change. When the pressure of a precipitating event occurs against a team, the players may begin to get out of their normal, confident flow and start to overanalyze their own performance and skills. We saw this in Dr. Sian Beilock's research in our article, Putt With Your Brain - Part 2. As an athlete's skills improve they don't need to consciously focus on them during a game. But pressure brought on by a negative event can take them out of this "automatic" mode as they start to focus on their mechanics to fix or reverse the problem. As Patrick Cohn, a sport psychologist, pointed out in a recent USA Today article on momentum, "You stop playing the game you played to be in that position. And the moment you switch to trying not to screw up, you go from a very offensive mind-set to a very defensive mind-set. If you're focusing too much on the outcome, it's difficult to play freely. And now they're worried more about the consequences and what's going to happen than what they need to do right now."There is no doubt that we will continue to hear references to momentum swings during games. When you do, you can conduct your own mini experiment and watch the reactions of the players and the teams over the next section of the game to see if that "precipitating event" actually leads to a game-changing moment. Jim Taylor, Andrew Demick (1994). A multidimensional model of momentum in sports Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 6 (1), 51-70 DOI: 10.1080/10413209408406465... Read more »
Jim Taylor, & Andrew Demick. (1994) A multidimensional model of momentum in sports. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 6(1), 51-70. DOI: 10.1080/10413209408406465
Jim Taylor, & Andrew Demick. (1994) A multidimensional model of momentum in sports. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 6(1), 51-70. DOI: 10.1080/10413209408406465
- August 15, 2008
- 02:50 PM
- 952 views
Inside An Olympian's Brain
by Dan Peterson in Sports Are 80 Percent Mental
Michael Phelps, Nastia Liukin, Misty May-Treanor and Lin Dan are four Olympic athletes who have each spent most of their life learning the skills needed to reach the top of their respective sports, swimming, gymnastics, beach volleyball and badminton (you were wondering about Lin, weren't you...) Their physical skills are obvious and amazing to watch. For just a few minutes, instead of being a spectator, try to step inside the heads of each of them and try to imagine what their brains must accomplish when they are competing and how different the mental tasks are for each of their sports.On a continuum from repetitive motion to reactive motion, these four sports each require a different level of brain signal to muscle movement. Think of Phelps finishing off one more gold medal race in the last 50 meters. His brain has one goal; repeat the same stroke cycle as quickly and as efficiently as possible until he touches the wall. There isn't alot of strategy or novel movement based on his opponent's movements. Its simply to be the first one to finish. What is he consciously thinking about during a race? In his post-race interviews, he says he notices the relative positions of other swimmers, his energy level and the overall effort required to win (and in at least one race, the level of water in his goggles.) At his level, the concept of automaticity (as discussed in a previous post) has certainly been reached, where he doesn't have to consciously "think" about the components of his stroke. In fact, research has shown that those who do start analyzing their body movements during competition are prone to errors as they take themselves out of their mental flow.Moving up the continuum, think about gymnastics. Certainly, the skills to perform a balance beam routine are practiced to the point of fluency, but the skills themselves are not as strictly repetitive as swimming. There are finer points of each movement being judged so gymnasts keep several mental "notes" about the current performance so that they can "remember" to keep their head up or their toes pointed or to gather speed on the dismount. There also is an order of skills or routine that needs to be remembered and activated.While swimming and gymnastics are battles against yourself and previously rehearsed movements, sports like beach volleyball and badminton require reactionary moves directly based on your opponents' movements. Rather than being "locked-in" to a stroke or practised routine, athletes in direct competition with their opponents must either anticipate or react to be successful. So, what is the brain's role in learning each of these varied sets of skills and what commands do our individual neurons control? Whether we are doing a strictly repetitive movement like a swim stroke or a unique, "on the fly" move like a return of a serve, what instructions are sent from our brain to our muscles? Do the neurons of the primary motor cortex (where movement is controlled in the brain) send out signals of both what to do and how to do it?Researchers at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT led by Robert Ajemian designed an experiment to solve this "muscles or movement" question. They trained adult monkeys to move a video game joystick so that a cursor on a screen would move towards a target. While the monkeys learned the task, they measured brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare the actual movements of the joystick with the firing patterns of neurons. The researchers then developed a model that allowed them to test hypotheses about the relationship between neuronal activity that they measured in the monkey's motor cortex and the resulting actions. They concluded that neurons do send both the specific signals to the muscles to make the movement and a goal-oriented instruction set to monitor the success of the movement towards the goal. Here is a video synopsis of a very similar experiment by Miguel Nicolelis, Professor of Neurobiology at Duke University:To back this up, Andrew Schwartz, professor of neurobiology at the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and his team of researchers wanted to isolate the brain signals from the actual muscles and see if the neuron impulses on their own could produce both intent to move and the movement itself. They taught adult monkeys to feed themselves using a robotic arm while the monkey's own arms were restrained. Instead, tiny probes the width of a human hair were placed in the monkey's motor cortex to pick up the electrical impulses created by the monkey's neurons. These signals were then evaluated by software controlling the robotic arm and the resulting movement instructions were carried out. The monkeys were able to control the arm with their "thoughts" and feed themselves food. Here is a video sample of the experiment:"In our research, we've demonstrated a higher level of precision, skill and learning," explained Dr. Schwartz. "The monkey learns by first observing the movement, which activates his brain cells as if he were doing it. It's a lot like sports training, where trainers have athletes first imagine that they are performing the movements they desire."It seems these "mental maps" of neurons in the motor cortex are the end goal for athletes to achieve the automaticity required to either repeat the same rehearsed motions (like Phelps and Liukin) or to react instantly to a new situation (like May-Treanor and Dan). Luckily, we can just practice our own automaticity of sitting on the couch and watching in a mesemerized state.R AJEMIAN, A GREEN, D BULLOCK, L SERGIO, J KALASKA, S GROSSBERG (2008). Assessing the Function of Motor Cortex: Single-Neuron Models of How Neural Response Is Modulated by Limb Biomechanics Neuron, 58 (3), 414-428 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2008.02.033Meel Velliste, Sagi Perel, M. Chance Spalding, Andrew S. Whitford, Andrew B. Schwartz (2008). Cortical control of a prosthetic arm for self-feeding Nature, 453 (7198), 1098-1101 DOI: 10.1038/nature06996... Read more »
R AJEMIAN, A GREEN, D BULLOCK, L SERGIO, J KALASKA, & S GROSSBERG. (2008) Assessing the Function of Motor Cortex: Single-Neuron Models of How Neural Response Is Modulated by Limb Biomechanics. Neuron, 58(3), 414-428. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2008.02.033
Meel Velliste, Sagi Perel, M. Chance Spalding, Andrew S. Whitford, & Andrew B. Schwartz. (2008) Cortical control of a prosthetic arm for self-feeding. Nature, 453(7198), 1098-1101. DOI: 10.1038/nature06996
R AJEMIAN, A GREEN, D BULLOCK, L SERGIO, J KALASKA, & S GROSSBERG. (2008) Assessing the Function of Motor Cortex: Single-Neuron Models of How Neural Response Is Modulated by Limb Biomechanics. Neuron, 58(3), 414-428. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2008.02.033
Meel Velliste, Sagi Perel, M. Chance Spalding, Andrew S. Whitford, & Andrew B. Schwartz. (2008) Cortical control of a prosthetic arm for self-feeding. Nature, 453(7198), 1098-1101. DOI: 10.1038/nature06996
- July 2, 2008
- 02:37 PM
- 566 views
Getting Sport Science Out Of The Lab And Onto The Field
by Dan Peterson in Sports Are 80 Percent Mental
You are a coach, trying to juggle practice plans, meetings, game prep and player issues while trying to stay focused on the season's goals. At the end of another long day, you see this in your inbox:
MEMOTo: All Head Coaches From: Athletic Director Subject: Monthly Reading List to Keep Up with Current Sport Science Research - Neuromuscular Activation of Triceps Surae Using Muscle Functional MRI and EMG- Positive effects of intermittent hypoxia (live high:train low) on exercise performance are not mediated primarily by augmented red cell volume- Physiologic Left Ventricular Cavity Dilatation in Elite Athletes- The Relationships of Perceived Motivational Climate to Cohesion and Collective Efficacy in Elite Female Teams Just some light reading before bedtime... This is an obvious exaggeration (and weak attempt at humor) of the gap between sport science researchers and practitioners. While those are actual research paper titles from the last few years under the heading of "sport science", the intended audience was most likely not coaches or athletes, but rather fellow academic peers. The real question is whether the important conclusions and knowledge captured in all of this research is ever actually used to improve athletic performance? How can a coach or athlete understand, combine and transfer this information into their game? David Bishop of the Faculty of Exercise and Sport Science at the University of Verona has been looking at this issue for several years. It started with a roundtable discussion he had at the 2006 Congress of the Australian Association for Exercise and Sports Science with several academic sport scientists (see: Sports-Science Roundtable: Does Sports-Science Research Influence Practice? ) He asked very direct questions regarding the definition of sport science and whether the research always needs to be "applied" versus establishing a "basic" foundation. The most intriguing question was whether there already is ample research that could applied, but it suffered from the lack of a good translator to interpret and communicate to the potential users - coaches and athletes. The panel agreed that was the missing piece, as most academic researchers just don't have the time to deliver all of their findings directly to the field. In a follow-up to this discussion, Bishop recently published his proposed solution titled, "An Applied Research Model for the Sport Sciences" in Sports Medicine (see citation below). In it, he calls for a new framework for researchers to follow when designing their studies so that there is always a focus on how the results will directly improve athletic performance. He calls for a greater partnership role between researchers and coaches to map out a useful agenda of real world problems to examine. He admits that this model, if implemented, will only help increase the potential for applied sport science. The "middleman" role is still needed to bring this information to the front lines of sports. The solution for this "gathering place" community seems perfect for Web 2.0 technology. One specific example is an online community called iStadia.com. Keith Irving and Rob Robson, two practicing sport science consultants, created the site two years ago to fill this gap. Today, with over 600 members, iStadia is approaching the type of critical mass that will be necessary to bring all of the stakeholders together. Of course, as with any online community, the conversations there are only as good as the participants want to make it. But, with the pressure on coaches to improve and the desire of sport scientists to produce relevant knowledge, there is motivation to make the connection. Another trend favoring more public awareness of sport science is the additional, recent media attention, especially related to the upcoming Beijing Olympics. In an earlier post, Winning Olympic Gold With Sport Science, I highlighted a feature article from USA Today. This month's Fast Company also picks up on this theme with their cover article, Innovation of Olympic Proportions, describing several high-tech equipment innovations that will be used at the Games. Each article mentions the evolving trust and acceptance of sport science research by coaches and athletes. When they see actual products, techniques and, most importantly, results come from the research, they cannot deny its value.
Bishop, D. (2008). An Applied Research Model for the
Sport Sciences. Sports Medicine, 38(3), 253-263.... Read more »
David Bishop. (2008) An Applied Research Model for the Sport Sciences. Sports Medicine, 38(3), 253-263. info:PMID/18278985
David Bishop. (2008) An Applied Research Model for the Sport Sciences. Sports Medicine, 38(3), 253-263. info:PMID/18278985
- June 21, 2008
- 03:32 PM
- 992 views
Single Sport Kids - When To Specialize
by Dan Peterson in Sports Are 80 Percent Mental
So, your grade school son or daughter is a good athlete, playing multiple sports and having fun at all of them. Then, you hear the usual warning, either from coaches or other parents; "If you want your daughter to go anywhere in this sport, then its time to let the other sports go and commit her full-time to this one." The logic sounds reasonable. The more time spent on one sport, the better she will be at that sport, right? Well, when we look at the three pillars of our Sports Cognition Framework, motor skill competence, decision making ability, and positive mental state, the question becomes whether any of these would benefit from playing multiple sports, at least in the early years of an athlete (ages 3-12)? It seems obvious that specific technical motor skills, (i.e. soccer free kicks, baseball bunting, basketball free throws) need plenty of practice and that learning the skill of shooting free throws will not directly make you a better bunter. On the other end, learning how to maintain confidence, increase your focus, and manage your emotions are skills that should easily transfer from one sport to another. That leaves the development of tactical decision making ability as the unknown variable. Will a young athlete learn more about field tactics, positional play and pattern recognition from playing only their chosen sport or from playing multiple related sports?Researchers at the University of Queensland, Australia learned from previous studies that for national team caliber players there is a correlation between the breadth of sport experiences they had as a child and the level of expertise they now have in a single sport. In fact, these studies show that there is an inverse relation between the amount of multi-sport exposure time and the additional sport-specific training to reach expert status. In plain English, the athletes that played several different (but related) sports as a child, were able to reach national "expert" level status faster than those that focused only one sport in grade school . Bruce Abernethy, Joseph Baker and Jean Cote designed an experiment to observe and measure if there was indeed a transfer of pattern recognition ability between related sports (i.e. team sports based on putting an object in a goal; hockey, soccer, basketball, etc.)They recruited two group of athletes; nationally recognized experts in each of three sports (netball, basketball and field hockey) who had broad sports experiences as children and experienced but not expert level players in the same sports whose grade school sports exposure was much more limited (single sport athletes). (For those unfamiliar with netball, it is basically basketball with no backboards and few different rules.) The experiment showed each group a video segment of an actual game in each of the sports. When the segment ended the groups were asked to map out the positions and directions of each of the players on the field, first offense and then defense, as best they could remember from the video clip. The non-expert players were the control group, while the expert players were the experimental groups. First, all players were shown a netball clip and asked to respond. Second, all were shown a basketball clip and finally the hockey clip. The expectation of the researchers was that the netball players would score the highest after watching the netball clip (no surprise there), but also that the expert players of the other two sports would score higher than the non-expert players. The reasoning behind their theory was that since the expert players were exposed to many different sports as a child, there might be a significant transfer effect between sports in pattern recognition, and that this extra ability would serve them well in their chosen sport.The results were as predicted. For each sport's test, the experts in that sport scored the highest, followed by the experts in the other sports, with the non-experts scoring the poorest in each sport. Their conclusion was that there was some generic learning of pattern recognition in team sports that was transferable. The takeaway from this study is that there is benefit to having kids play multiple sports and that this may shorten the time and training needed to excel in a single sport in the future.So, go ahead and let your kids play as many sports as they want. Resist the temptation to "overtrain" in one sport too soon. Playing several sports certainly will not hurt their future development and will most likely give them time to find their true talents and their favorite sport.Source:Abernethy, B., Baker, J., Côté, J. (2005). Transfer of pattern recall skills may contribute to the development of sport expertise. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 19(6), 705-718. DOI: 10.1002/acp.1102... Read more »
Bruce Abernethy, Joseph Baker, & Jean Côté. (2005) Transfer of pattern recall skills may contribute to the development of sport expertise. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 19(6), 705-718. DOI: 10.1002/acp.1102
Bruce Abernethy, Joseph Baker, & Jean Côté. (2005) Transfer of pattern recall skills may contribute to the development of sport expertise. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 19(6), 705-718. DOI: 10.1002/acp.1102
- June 14, 2008
- 07:20 PM
- 898 views
Why The Offsides Flag Has Been "Ruud" to Italy
by Dan Peterson in Sports Are 80 Percent Mental
Two Euro 2008 games and two questionable offsides calls against Italy, one on defense, the other on offense, are still being talked about this weekend. First, in the Netherlands opener, van Nistelrooy scores from an obvious offsides position... except for Panucci, who is lying on the ground next to the goal. In fact, UEFA had to defend their referee for a correct interpretation. The call that did not get an explanation was Luca Toni's offsides on a cross from Zambrotta in the Romania match, which disallowed a first half goal. The first call was deemed correct, the second one was a blatant error.
Calling offsides correctly is one of the most difficult officiating duties in sports. In fact, some have argued that it is nearly impossible given the limitations of the human eye and the number of objects that need to be tracked by one assistant referee. Back in 2004, Francisco Belda Maruenda, M.D. of Centro de Salud de Alquerías in Murcia, Spain, took a look at the eye movements necessary along with their associated durations to determine if it was a humanly possible task. Let's look at his logic.
First, some eye physiology definitions are needed:
Saccadic movements - when we shift our eyes' focus from one object to another, we are making a saccadic movement. As an assistant referee (AR) looks from the ball carrier to the last defender to the offensive players, he needs to make several saccadic movements to take in the whole scene.
Vergence movements - there are two types, convergence (changing gaze from objects far away to objects closer to you), and divergence (just the opposite, near to far).
Accomodation - to change the focus of the eye from far to near or near to far, the convexity of the retina lens needs to change.
All of these eye movements, saccadic, vergence and accomodations take time to accomplish. Let's see how Maruenda added these up for an offsides call:
- the AR needs to keep track of at least four objects, the ball, the last two defenders and the offensive receiver of the pass. There may also be more offensive players to track as well.
- to make saccadic movements from the first object to each of the remaining objects will take about 130ms for the first object and then another 10ms per object after that. With four objects to track, that would be a total of about 160ms.
- if some of the players are on the far side of the field and some on the near side, then a vergence movement and an accomodation would be required, taking an additional 360ms for the accomodation and 640ms for the far to near vergence movement.
- of course, the players are constantly moving during the play, so their position is changing rapidly. If the speed of an offensive player is assumed to be 7.14 m/s, then in 100ms, they will have moved 71cm. This movement could be the difference between an onside position and an offside position. See the diagrams below (taken directly from the article)
Top: No offside, players in correct position.
Bottom: 100 ms later (players' velocity 7.14 m/s), offsides
The conclusion then, is that the total time needed for the AR to focus on at least four different objects in sequential order and process their positions cognitively is beyond the 100ms that would be needed for an offensive player to move from an onside position when the ball is played to a perceived offsides position when the AR finally focuses on him.
There have been some responses to Maruenda's logic, mainly centered on the fact that ARs have long known they can't watch the ball and the last defender, so they instead listen for the sound of the ball being struck while staying focused on the line of defense. This method may be used, but the sound of the crowd, the muted sound of the boot on the ball and the slower speed of sound may also have an effect on this judgement.
There is technology being developed to make offsides calls with multiple cameras, etc., but FIFA is not in favor of taking the flag away from the AR yet, just as they are against obvious goal line technology to watch for goals. It appears the debates and arguments will live on for the near future.
Belda Maruenda, F. (2004). Can the human eye detect an offside position during a football match?. BMJ, 329(7480), 1470-1472. DOI: 10.1136/bmj.329.7480.1470... Read more »
F Belda Maruenda. (2004) Can the human eye detect an offside position during a football match?. BMJ, 329(7480), 1470-1472. DOI: 10.1136/bmj.329.7480.1470
F Belda Maruenda. (2004) Can the human eye detect an offside position during a football match?. BMJ, 329(7480), 1470-1472. DOI: 10.1136/bmj.329.7480.1470
- June 13, 2008
- 04:03 PM
- 698 views
Federer and Nadal Can See the Difference
by Dan Peterson in Sports Are 80 Percent Mental
Watching Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal battle it out in the French Open final and now again in the Wimbledon final, I started thinking more about the interceptive timing task requirements of each of their visuomotor systems... yeah, right. C'mon, I just needed a good opening line for this post.
However, other than a 120 mph tennis serve, take a second to think about all of the different sports that send an object flying at you at very high speeds that you not only have to see, but also estimate the speed of the object, the movement of the object and what you want to do with the object once it gets to you.
Some examples are:
- a hockey puck at a goalie (70-100 mph)
- a baseball pitch at a batter (70-100 mph)
- a soccer ball kicked at a keeper (60-90 mph)
Previously, we took a look at this in baseball and in soccer and also discussed the different types of visual skills in sports. There, we broke it down into three categories:
- Targeting tasks
- Interceptive timing tasks
- Tactical decision making tasks
The second category, interceptive timing tasks, deals with the examples above; stuff coming at you fast and you need to react. There are three levels of response that take an increasing level of brainpower. First, there is a basic reaction, also known as optometric reaction. In other words, "see it and get out of the way". Next, there is a perceptual reaction, meaning you actually can identify the object coming at you and can put it in some context (i.e. that is a tennis ball coming at you and not a bird swooping out of the sky). Finally, there is a cognitive reaction, meaning you know what is coming at you and you have a plan of what to do with it (i.e. return the ball with top-spin down the right line). This cognitive skill is usually sport-specific and learned over years of tactical training. Obviously, for professional tennis players, they are at the expert cognitive stage and have a plan for most shots. Federer's problem was that Nadal had better plans. But, in order to reach that cognitive stage, they first need to have excellent optometric and perceptual skills. Can those skills be trained? Or are the best tennis players born with naturally better abilities? Did their training make them better tennis players or are they better players because of some natural skills?
Leila Overney and her team at the Brain Mind Institute of Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) recently studied whether expert tennis players have better visual perception abilities than other athletes and non-tennis players. Typically, motor skill research compares experts to non-experts and tries to deduce what the experts are doing differently to excel. In this study, an additional category was added. Overney wanted to see if the perceptual skills of the tennis players were significantly more advanced than athletes of a similar fitness level, (in this case triathletes), to eliminate the variable of "fitness", and also more advanced than novice tennis players (the typical comparison). To eliminate the cognitive knowledge difference between the groups, she used seven non-sport specific visual tests. Please see the actual study for details of all the tests. The bottom line of the results was that certain motion detection and speed discrimination skills were better in the tennis players (in other words, being able to track a ball coming at you and its movement side to side).
So, the expert tennis players were better at tracking balls coming at them than triathletes and non-tennis players.... seems pretty obvious(!) But, these results are a first step to answering the question of "can these skills be trained"? We see that there is, indeed, a difference in ability level between expert players and athletes that are in similar shape and competitive spirit. Now, the question becomes, "how did these tennis players acquire a higher level of perception skill"? Was it "nature or nurture", "genetically gifted or trained through practice"?
What do you think?
Source: Overney, L.S., Blanke, O., Herzog, M.H., Burr, D.C. (2008). Enhanced Temporal but Not Attentional Processing in Expert Tennis Players. PLoS ONE, 3(6), e2380. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0002380... Read more »
Leila Overney, Olaf Blanke, Michael H Herzog, & David C Burr. (2008) Enhanced Temporal but Not Attentional Processing in Expert Tennis Players. PLoS ONE, 3(6). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0002380
Leila Overney, Olaf Blanke, Michael H Herzog, & David C Burr. (2008) Enhanced Temporal but Not Attentional Processing in Expert Tennis Players. PLoS ONE, 3(6). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0002380
- May 26, 2008
- 07:08 PM
- 930 views
A Keeper's Nightmare - Beckham, Ronaldo or Juninho
by Dan Peterson in Sports Are 80 Percent Mental
Whether you bend it like Beckham or Ronaldo or Juninho or even Nakamura; the curving free kick is one of the most exciting plays in soccer/football. Starting with Rivelino in the 1970 World Cup and on to the specialists of today, more players know how to do it and understand the basic physics behind it, but very few can perfect it. But, when it does happen, by chance or skill, it is the highlight of the game.But let's take a look at this from the other side, through the eyes of the goalkeeper. Obviously, its their job to anticipate where the free kick is going and get to the spot before the ball crosses the line. He sets up his wall to, hopefully, narrow the width of the target, but he knows some players are capable of bending the ball around or over the wall towards the near post. If you watch highlights of free kick goals, you often see keepers flat-footed, just watching the ball go into the top corner. Did they guess wrong and then were not able to react? Did they guess right but misjudged the flight trajectory of the ball. How much did the sidespin or "bend" affect their perception of the exact spot where the ball will cross the line?Researchers at Queen's University Belfast and the University of the Mediterranean in France tried to figure this out in this paper. They wanted to compare the abilities of expert field players and expert goalkeepers to accurately predict if a free kick would result in an on-target goal or off-target non-goal. First, a bit about why the ball "bends". We can thank what's called the "Magnus Force" named after the 19th-century German physicist Gustav Magnus. As seen in the diagram below, as the ball spins counter clockwise (for a right-footed player using his instep and kicking the ball on the right side), the air pressure on the left side of the ball is lower as the spin is in the same direction as the oncoming air flow. On the right side of the ball, the spin is in the opposite direction of the air flow, building higher pressure. The ball will follow the path of least resistance, or pressure, and "bend" or curve from right to left. The speed of the spin and the velocity of the shot will determine the amount of bend. For a clockwise spin, the ball bends from left to right.The researchers showed the players three different types of simulated kicks, a kick bent to the right, a kick bent to the left and a kick with no spin at all. They showed the players these simulations with virtual reality headsets and computer controlled "kicks" and "balls" which they could vary in flight with different programming. The balls would disappear from view at distances of 10 and 12.5 meters from the goal. The reasoning is that this cutoff would correspond with the deadline for reaction time to make a save on the ball. In other words, if the keeper does not correctly guess the final trajectory and position of the ball by this point, he most likely will not be able to physically get to the ball and make the save.The results showed that both the players and the keepers, (all 20 were expert players from elite clubs like AC Milan, Marseille, Bayer LeverkusenSchalke 04), were able to correctly predict the result of the kicks with no spin added. However, as 600 RPM spin, either clockwise or counter-clockwise, was added to the ball, the players success declined significantly. Interestingly, the keepers did no better, statistically, then the field players. The researchers conclusion was that the players used the "current heading direction" of the ball to predict the final result, rather than factoring the future affect of the acceleration and change in trajectory caused by the spin.Game HighlightsJust as we saw in the Baseball Hitting post, our human perception skill in tracking flying objects, especially those that are spinning and changing direction, are not perfect. If we understand the physics of the spinning ball and we can better guess at its path, but the pitcher or the free kick taker doesn't usually offer this information beforehand! In the next few posts, I'll be looking at a related topic in perception; a concept known as "Quiet Eye", developed by Prof. Joan Vickers. Check back as this is one of the best applications of cognitive science in sports that I have seen.Source:Craig, C.M., Berton, E., Rao, G., Fernandez, L., Bootsma, R.J. (2006). Judging where a ball will go: the case of curved free kicks in football. Naturwissenschaften, 93(2), 97-101. DOI: 10.1007/s00114-005-0071-0... Read more »
Cathy Craig, Eric Berton, Guillaume Rao, Laure Fernandez, & Reinoud J Bootsma. (2006) Judging where a ball will go: the case of curved free kicks in football. Naturwissenschaften, 93(2), 97-101. DOI: 10.1007/s00114-005-0071-0
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