The impact of contextual priors and anxiety on performance effectiveness and processing efficiency in anticipation

Abstract

It is proposed that experts are able to integrate prior contextual knowledge with emergent visual information to make complex predictive judgments about the world around them, often under heightened levels of uncertainty and extreme time constraints. However, limited knowledge exists about the impact of anxiety on the use of such contextual priors when forming our decisions. We provide a novel insight into the combined impact of contextual priors and anxiety on anticipation in soccer. Altogether, 12 expert soccer players were required to predict the actions of an oncoming opponent while viewing life-sized video simulations of 2-versus-2 defensive scenarios. Performance effectiveness and processing efficiency were measured under four conditions: no contextual priors (CP) about the action tendencies of the opponent and low anxiety (LA); no CP and high anxiety (HA); CP and LA; CP and HA. The provision of contextual priors did not affect processing efficiency, but it improved performance effectiveness on congruent trials. Anxiety negatively affected processing efficiency, but this did not affect the use of contextual priors or influence performance effectiveness. It appears that anxiety and prior contextual information impact attentional resources independent of each other. Findings are discussed with reference to current models of anticipation and anxiety.

The use of contextual priors and kinematic information during anticipation in sport: toward a Bayesian integration framework

“…In contrast to their predictions, contextual priors pertaining to the cricket bowler's action tendencies, game state, and field setting did not alter the batters' perceived cognitive load. These findings align with those reported in studies by Broadbent et al (2018) and Runswick et al (2017) in which RSME was used to assess the processing demands of using contextual priors during anticipation tasks in soccer and cricket, respectively. Furthermore, Runswick et al (2018a) implemented a backward-counting task in their design, in order to test the impact of contextual priors under conditions of increased task load.…”

“…However, the performance improvement on congruent trials was not found when the secondary task was included. In contrast to the studies by Runswick et al (2018a) and Broadbent et al (2018), the increased task load supressed the performance-enhancing effects of contextual priors as participants had to consider dynamic priors in order to use the stable contextual priors effectively. This interplay between different sources of contextual priors, and kinematic information, appears to be a more demanding process and therefore when a cognitively demanding secondary task was introduced participants were less effective in their use of priors.…”

“…Contextual priors can be stable during the unfolding action, as they are established before the action commences and remain unchanged throughout its time course, such as opponent action tendencies (Broadbent et al, 2018;Gray, 2015;Gray & Cañal-Bruland, 2018;Gredin et al, 2018;2020a;2020b;Helm et al, 2020;Loffing et al, 2015;Lüders et al, 2020;Mann et al, 2014;Navia et al, 2013). Mann et al (2014) demonstrated that when expert handball goalkeepers implicitly accrued knowledge of an opponent penalty taker's action tendencies over a training period, they biased their subsequent judgements according to those tendencies resulting in a congruency effecti.e.…”

“…dribble 67%; pass 33%), rather than the likelihood that the end outcome was left or right (cf. Broadbent et al, 2018). The final position of the second attacker was therefore critical for interpretation of the stable priors and subsequent anticipation of the final action (i.e.…”

Mental Fatigue in Soccer: A Systematic Review

“…Con relación a las variables tácticas, fueron encontrados efectos perjudiciales de la fatiga mental sobre la sincronización entre los jugadores de motivational consequences marked by rewards and losses in high-level of performance. 29 In this sense, research has shown that mental effort prior 30 to or simultaneous 31 to a physical task, as well as stress and anxiety 32 cause changes in soccer performance. Thus, considering cognitive and psychological demands of soccer, it is assumed that the cognitive engagement of players to give practical solutions to the game may cause mental fatigue.…”