Training Perceptual Skill by Orienting Visual Attention

Abstract

A major element in expert sports performance, particularly racket-and-ball games, is excellent anticipatory skill. A prestudy combined the temporal and spatial occlusion paradigms to ascertain which key stimuli badminton players use for anticipating the direction of overhead shots. The main study then evaluated a program for training anticipatory skills; 200 video clips were employed to orient attention toward these key stimuli. Participants were 63 badminton novices, 20 national league players, and 21 local league players. A transparent red patch (exogenous orienting) was used to orient attention toward the trunk up to 160 ms before racket-shuttle contact; the arm, from 160 ms to 80 ms before contact; and the racket, from 80 ms before to actual contact. Results showed that badminton novices who trained with this program signifi cantly improved their anticipatory skill between post-and retention test compared with controls. Whereas local league players improved from pre-to posttest, training had no effect on expert national league players. It is concluded that using red transparent patches to highlight the most informative cues in perceptual training programs is a promising way to improve anticipatory skill.

Guiding Attention Aids the Acquisition of Anticipatory Skill in Novice Soccer Goalkeepers

“…Given the conflicting findings from previous studies that have attempted to use cueing to help guide attention (Abernethy et al, 2012;Hagemann et al, 2006;Savelsbergh et al, 2010), the key point of interest was to establish whether guided perceptual training, when experienced in combination with normal (unguided) training clips, would be effective in improving anticipatory performance. We predicted that following a training intervention, the guided perceptual-training group would demonstrate a greater capability to anticipate penalty kick placement compared with either the group experiencing unguided perceptual training or the control group, and we predicted that this would be the result of a genuine improvement in performance rather than a reflection of a change in RT (cf.…”

“…These findings not only support previous studies reporting the positive effects of perceptual-skill training (e.g., Franks & Harvey, 1997;McMorris & Hauxwell, 1997), but they demonstrate that some forms of perceptual training are more successful than others (cf. Abernethy et al, 2012;Hagemann et al, 2006;Savelsbergh et al, 2010). The guided and unguided perceptual-training groups experienced the same amount of training, had the same availability of feedback, and viewed precisely the same clips; this provides strong evidence that the guidance provided by the cueing to the key kinematic information and the expert search strategy was the key factor in improving anticipatory performance.…”

“…In this study, based in part on the work of Hagemann et al (2006) and Savelsbergh et al (2010), innovative methodological interventions were used to guide novice soccer players to use essential kinematic cues and expert- like visual gaze patterns to improve their game-specific anticipatory skills. An attempt was made to move toward an informative intervention that sought to guide the learning of individuals, while not providing highly verbal and/or explicit instructions about the important information to interpret movement.…”

“…Hagemann, Strauss, and Cañal-Bruland (2006) used a transparent colored patch to highlight the location(s) of essential information for anticipation of the direction of overhead shots in badminton. Novices given such training performed better after training, and after a retention period, they performed better than novices given no training, but this advantage was not reproduced for more skilled players.…”

Efeitos de estresse e treino na latência e acurácia de respostas motoras a estímulos visuais.

“…In this case they presented video clips filmed from the goalkeepers' perspective and also added transparent ellipses during these films to orient attention to relevant areas at different and crucial moments. In another study, Hagemann et al (2006) used in a badminton task a transparent red patch to orient athletes' attention to relevant areas of information at different moments before racketshuttle contact. Like in the study of Abernethy et al (1999) and Savelsbergh et al (2010a), participants learned both the location and timing of the focus of attention, which resulted in significant improvement in anticipatory skill.…”