The Use of Patterns to Disguise Environmental Cues During an Anticipatory Judgment Task

Abstract

1A number of novel manipulations to the design of playing uniforms were used 2 in order to try and disguise the intentions of penalty-takers in soccer. Skilled 3 and less-skilled soccer goalkeepers were required to anticipate penalty-kick 4 outcome while their opponent wore one of three different uniform designs that 5 were intended to disguise the availability of potentially key information from 6 the hip region. Variations of shapes/patterns were designed to conceal the 7 actual alignment of the hips. Three occlusion points were used in the test film: 8 -160 ms, -80 ms before, and at foot-ball contact. Skilled individuals reported 9 higher accuracy scores than their less-skilled counterparts (p < 0.05). There 10 were no performance decrements for the less-skilled group across the 11 different uniform conditions (p > 0.05); however, the skilled group decreased 12 their accuracy on the experimental conditions compared with the control (p < 13 0.05). Findings highlight the potential benefits of designing playing uniforms 14 that facilitate disguise in sport. 15 16

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

“…The temporal occlusion data in the current study corroborates previous research showing how the importance of different cues evolves across the movement [ 20 , 23 ]. The traditional and robust temporal occlusion effect was present, with an increase in accuracy at the later occlusion points [ 7 ].…”

“…It was also predicted that the skilled group would perform significantly better than the less-skilled group in all conditions [ 22 ]. Finally, we predicted that both groups would perform significantly better in the later temporal occlusion conditions, compared to the earlier conditions [ 20 , 23 ].…”

“…However, it appears that at -80 before ball contact skilled athletes are able to demonstrate extremely high anticipation accuracy for direction judgements. This finding seems to be a critical time point for direction prediction, as significantly decreases in performance have been noted when information in the hip region has been disguised [ 20 ]. Furthermore, the angle of the hips has been showed to correlate to ball direction between 150 and 50 ms before ball contact [ 18 ].…”

“…Specifically, if the ball is directed to the goalkeepers left (assuming a right-footed penalty-taker), the hips slope away from the goalkeeper, whereas if the ball is travelling right the hips are square to the goal. Further support for the role of the hip region in penalty-kick anticipation was provided by Causer and Williams [ 20 ], who manipulated cues emanating from this region. Playing uniforms were developed that used patterns to disrupt the alignment of the hips.…”

Utilizing Video-Based Trainings to Improve Decision Making in High School Quarterbacks

“…With enough practice though, temporal occlusion interventions have been effective in improving the prediction/decision-making accuracy of intermediate-level athletes [21], high-level adolescent athletes [22], and elite-level athletes [23]. Most studies using the temporal occlusion paradigm investigate processes involved in interceptive activities, such as predicting the direction of a penalty kick in soccer [23][24][25], fielding and batting in cricket [26,27], returning a tennis serve [21], catching a ball one-handed [28], predicting the landing position of a shuttle in badminton [29], and predicting the direction and force of an opponent's stroke in squash [30].…”