Conscious Control over Action

Shepherd, Joshua

doi:10.1111/mila.12082

Cited by 62 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 62 publications

(78 reference statements)

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“…Collectively, the findings highlight the influence of uncertainty on the gaze and interceptive performance of batters, and is consistent with the idea of 'top-down' cognitive influences shaping the performance of tasks that are considered to occur automatically and without thought (see Shepherd, 2015).…”

Section: Performing a Dynamic Interceptive Actionsupporting

confidence: 83%

“…It may be that the experimental designs of previous studies have facilitated prediction, whereas skilled performers during competition may require less prediction than what has been previously captured in experimental conditions. This not only supports the idea that the context in which the action is performed shapes the performance of dynamic interceptive tasks (Shepherd, 2015;Todorović, 2010), but highlights that contextual variability, such as that typically experienced during competition, is crucial for establishing a clearer understanding of the development of visual-motor expertise (Pinder, Davids, Renshaw, & Araújo, 2011b). This representative design should therefore form the cornerstone for future investigations and training paradigms seeking to improve batting performance (see Sarpeshkar & Mann, 2011).…”

Section: The Influence Of Ball-swing On Visual-motor Behaviour Duringsupporting

confidence: 60%

“…Specifically, the adult club batters, more so than the other groups, showed a significant change in their movement strategy that was consistent with a shift from a pre-programmed movement when the straight balls were blocked together, to a more online control of movement when the straight balls were co-presented with swinging balls. Given that the ball-flight trajectories were identical when facing both the blocked-straight and random-straight trials, this provides evidence to support the idea that the contextual environment in which an action is performed (and the cognitive engagement that goes with it) can significantly influence how that action is accomplished (Shepherd, 2015;Todorović, 2010).…”

Section: Overview Of Key Findingsmentioning

confidence: 68%

“…Crucially, this study shows that this influence is evident even in significant changes to kinematics (Chapter 2) and visual-motor behaviour (e.g., Sutton, 2007). Clearly top-down influences shape how dynamic time-constrained interceptive tasks like cricket batting are performed, tasks that are sometimes considered to occur rather automatically and outside of conscious awareness (see Shepherd, 2015). This raises an additional dimension for future studies to consider when designing an ecologically valid environment for the examination of the development of visual-motor expertise when performing a fast-paced interceptive action.…”

Section: The Possibility Of Ball-swing Influences Batting Performancementioning

confidence: 75%

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Interception in the presence of ball-swing: exploring the development of visual-motor expertise in cricket batting

Sarpeshkar¹

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Precise visual-motor coordination underpins success in fast-ball sports. Previous studies highlight significant differences in both the gaze and kinematic behaviour of skilled and lesser-skilled performers when carrying out interceptive actions (e.g., predictive eye movements and temporal coupling between the body and the hitting implement). However, much of what we know is based largely on studies that adopt case-study designs and/or simplified task environments, making it difficult to generalise the findings to the wider population and to the challenging tasks actually encountered in the performance environment. This is particularly true when seeking to intercept targets that follow a curved or swinging flight-path rather than a straight trajectory. Successful interception in the presence of ball-swing requires remarkable spatio-temporal precision, and helps to test performance at the limits of human performance. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to establish a comprehensive understanding of the development of visual-motor expertise using interception in the presence of ball-swing as a model of a highly demanding interceptive task.The four experimental chapters in this thesis collectively report the findings of one largescale experiment that assessed the visual-motor behaviour of cricket batters in situ. In the experiment, four groups of batters, who systematically differed according to their level of batting skill and age, attempted to hit balls projected by a hybrid 'ProBatter' ball-machine.Crucially, balls travelled at speeds that reflected those experienced during competition and ball-swing was introduced to manipulate task difficulty. Batters wore a portable eye tracking system to record their gaze direction, and high-speed video footage was used to analyse kinematic behaviour.Kinematic behaviours have been shown to underpin success and distinguish batters of different skill levels when hitting a ball. However, little is known about how widely these findings generalise to actions performed in more representative task conditions (e.g., faster ball-speeds and swinging flight-paths). Therefore, the first experimental chapter (Chapter 2) aims to examine the development of timing and movement coordination when hitting a ball in these conditions. Kinematics were compared when batters intercepted balls that followed a (i) straight flight-path only, and (ii) random mixture of straight and swinging flight-paths. Results revealed skill-based differences in interceptive performance when hitting straight balls, with the performance of all batters decreasing in the presence of ballswing (particularly when the ball swung away from the batter). Ball-swing delayed the timing of most key moments in the hitting action, with batters increasing the velocity of bat-III swing to overcome those delays. Knowledge that the ball could swing (hitting straight balls mixed with swinging trajectories) also altered the batting kinematics, highlighting the potential impact of top-down cognitive influences on kinematics and pe...

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Section: Performing a Dynamic Interceptive Actionsupporting

confidence: 83%

Section: The Influence Of Ball-swing On Visual-motor Behaviour Duringsupporting

confidence: 60%

Section: Overview Of Key Findingsmentioning

confidence: 68%

Section: The Possibility Of Ball-swing Influences Batting Performancementioning

confidence: 75%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Interception in the presence of ball-swing: exploring the development of visual-motor expertise in cricket batting

Sarpeshkar¹

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“…Further, we make a distinction between conscious and unconscious awareness (e.g., see Shepherd, 2014). Conscious awareness of action refers to the ability to report, reconstruct or reflect on the specific components of an action.…”

Section: Conscious Awareness Of How To Perform Visually-guided Actionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Consciousness and choking in visually-guided actions

Koedijker

2014

Phenom Cogn Sci

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The Role of Consciousness in Free Action

Woodward¹

2023

A Companion to Free Will

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For Wiley Companion to Free Will) IntroductionIt is easy to prompt the intuition that free will and consciousness have something importantly to do with one another. Consider cases such as the following:Case 1: Your spouse accuses you of having broken your commitment to the family diet by stealing cake from the refrigerator in the middle of the night, and he is in possession of damning videographic evidence. In your defense, you point to your long history of sleepwalking, and suggest that you make an appointment with a sleep doctor.Case 2: On a weekend, you get behind the wheel of your car and head to the grocery store. As you drive, your mind drifts, until you suddenly realize that you are not on your way to the store after all, but have instead followed the route you take to work each weekday.In neither of these cases does it seem that your action (eating a piece of cake, driving to work) is the product of your free will, and this fact can be explained, in both cases, in terms of your lack of conscious awareness of what you were doing. But it is not always so intuitively clear what type or degree of conscious awareness is required for an action to count as free, as exemplified in the following cases:Case 3: During a game of basketball, you steal the ball and make a fast break down the court. As you set up to make a shot, you spot an open teammate out of the corner of your eye, and without thinking dish the ball to her so she can complete an unimpeded lay-up.Case 4: As you watch an advertisement on television for a charity organization, you resolve to make a generous donation, and this in contrast to your typical stinginess. Later you learn that the advertisers flashed the word 'GIVE' for a duration too brief for you to have consciously processed.In Cases 3 and 4, your actions (passing a basketball, making a donation) are significantly shaped by non-conscious processes of which you were unaware at the time of acting. As a consequence, should we say that they were not done freely? This question is difficult to answer in the absence of a general theory of the relationship between consciousness and free will. And no consensus currently exists regarding this general theory. The reason is that the cognitive function of consciousness, on the one hand, and the necessary conditions for freedom, on the other, are matters of considerable controversy.Regarding the cognitive function of consciousness, at least the five following options have contemporary adherents (roughly in descending order of how much cognitive weight consciousness bears):The Selfhood Role: A subject, properly speaking, is identical with a conscious subject; non-conscious states and processes constitute the subject only derivatively. (While held paradigmatically by robust realists about the self, this view is by no means restricted to them. It can also be held by those who identify the self with the stream of consciousness, or with a narrative constructed out of conscious experiences.)The Self-awareness Role: Consciousness alone affords subjects with priv...

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Conscious Control over Action

Cited by 62 publications

References 62 publications

Interception in the presence of ball-swing: exploring the development of visual-motor expertise in cricket batting

Interception in the presence of ball-swing: exploring the development of visual-motor expertise in cricket batting

Consciousness and choking in visually-guided actions

The Role of Consciousness in Free Action

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