To wrap-up the year I am creating some video reviews of some of my favourite journal articles from 2020, putting my own ecological spin on things 🙂 Motor learning in real-world pool billiards Consistent Hand Dynamics Are Achieved by Controlling Variabilities Among Joint Movements During Fastball Pitching Fatigue-Related and Timescale-Dependent Changes in Individual Movement Patterns…

Outlining the key differences between the Information Processing and Ecological Approaches to Skill Acquisition. Is this a useful dichotomy?

I think by now most people have seen the video demonstrating Christiana Ronaldo’s incredible ability to play soccer “in the dark” – that is, execute skilled actions when the lights are turned completely off at some point. The typical explanation for why he can do this (including the one given by the people in the…

The latest in skill acquisition and performance research from perceptonaction.com -Where should a soccer player look when they are running up to strike the ball during a free kick? This question was investigated in a new study published in the International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching. Consistent with the typical findings on the quiet…

The latest in skill acquisition and performance research from perceptonaction.com -Can one session of differential learning improve visuo-motor performance? In a new study published in the European Journal of Sport Science, Serrien and colleagues examined this question using a task which involved turning lights presented in periphery off by hitting them with your hand. Kind…

The latest in skill acquisition and performance research from perceptonaction.com What are the implications for skill acquisition and coaching if we accept that performers are complex adaptative systems? In a new opinion article posted on Sports Medicine, Pol and colleagues consider this interesting question. They emphasize that athletes and teams are co-adaptive and develop functional…

The latest in skill acquisition and performance research from perceptonaction.com -Can perceptual-motor training be used to reduce the chance at athlete will get a knee injury playing sports? In a paper from the recent International Society of Biomechanics in Sport conference, Tidman and colleagues compared two types of training to a control group using a…

The latest in skill acquisition and performance research from perceptonaction.com -An often overlooked aspect of skilled performance is the intersectionality between gender and motor learning. One way in which this manifests itself is stereotype threat which occurs when a common stereotype like “girls are bad at math” or “men don’t putt as well” impairs learning….

The latest in skill acquisition and performance research from perceptonaction.com -What happens when we use virtual reality to give you an abnormally large hand or foot? In a really interesting new chapter, Stefanucci and colleagues consider the topic of embodiment in virtual environments. Among the work they discuss, are studies that have given participants altered…

The latest in skill acquisition and performance research from perceptonaction.com -Can Heart Rate Variability Biofeedback Improve Athletic Performance? Your heart rate variability is essentially a measure of the consistency of timing from beat to beat. I think most people are surprised to learn that a healthy heart doesn’t beat with perfect regularity like a metronome….