Legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden once said: “The importance of repetition until automaticity cannot be overstated”. Reaching a stage where some skills can be performed “automatically” is thought to be one of the main goals of sports training and one of the defining characteristics of being an expert.  But what exactly does it mean for a sports skill to be “automatic” and how exactly is this desired state achieved through training? In this episode, I introduce the topic of skill acquisition be exploring traditional theories of how an athlete progresses from a novice to an expert. Research confessions: Does research always happen like we say it does in journal articles?   Links to articles discussed: Movement automaticity in sport From attentional control to attentional spillover: a skill-level investigation of attention, movement, and performance outcomes Expertise, attention, and memory in sensorimotor skill execution: impact of novel task constraints on dual-task performance and episodic memory Fitts & Posner   More information http://www.perceptionactionpodcast.libsyn.com/ My Research Gate Page (pdfs of my articles) My ASU Web page Podcast Facebook page (videos, pics, etc) Twitter: @Shakeywaits Email: robgray@asu.edu   Credits:  The Flamin' Groovies - Shake Some Action Matt Augustine - Learn How to Swim Jonathan DImmel – Learn From Me Sonic Avenues – Automatic Arsonist – Hot Salsa Trip Room One Eleven – Automatic via freemusicarchive.org and jamendo.com    

News: Is listening to heavy metal music bad for you?   Articles: Three Decades Later: The Life Experiences and Mid-Life Functioning of 1980s Heavy Metal Groupies, Musicians, and Fans   More information http://www.perceptionactionpodcast.libsyn.com/ My Research Gate Page (pdfs of my articles) My ASU Web page Podcast Facebook page (videos, pics, etc) Twitter: @Shakeywaits Email: robgray@asu.edu   Credits: Insane Ride – Sound of Rock n Roll Jose O Salvador – For Those About to Rock Behold the Living Corpse – Death March Without God – Space Weed Wizardry – Keeper of Doom Vincebus Eruptum – Hand of Doomish Metamophosis – Ballada Bezbozna Tombs – Seven Stars of The Angel of Death Hellcore - Sakit Jiwa Terinfeksi Subterrestrial – We Live Inside The Old Submarine – Flawless Utopian Condition – Human Despair Singularity – Screaming at the Sun Hound – Sleeping Hound Silent Sorrow - The Sorrow Embrace Zoliborz - To Balagopalan Ganapathy via freemusicarchive.org and jamendo.com

What should an athlete focus their attention on when performing their sport? Should you pay attention to how your body is moving, the crowd, your opponents, what you need to buy at the store after the game, or something else?  Is it the same if you just learning the sport?  In this episode I focus my attention of focusing attention. What Grinds My Gears: Does sports science get enough respect?  Internal/external focus debate   Links to articles discussed: When paying attention becomes counterproductive Attending to the Execution of a Complex Sensorimotor Skill: Expertise Differences, Choking, and Slumps Attention and motor performance: Preferences for and advantages of an external focus Enhancing the learning of sport skills through external-focus feedback From attentional control to attentional spillover: A skill-level investigation of attention, movement, and performance outcomes Effects of focus of attention on baseball batting performance in players of different skill level Increasing the distance of an external focus of attention enhances learning Enhancing performance proficiency at the expert level: Considering the role of ‘somaesthetic awareness’ Why did Tiger Woods shoot 82? A commentary on Toner and Moran (2015)   More information http://www.perceptionactionpodcast.libsyn.com/ My Research Gate Page (pdfs of my articles) My ASU Web page Podcast Facebook page (videos, pics, etc) Twitter: @Shakeywaits Email: robgray@asu.edu   Credits: The Flamin' Groovies - Shake Some Action  The Cute Leepers – All this Attention is Killing Me Conny Olivetti – Attention Span Zero Fallen to Flux – Outside, Looking In Reigning Sound - Straight Shooter    Via freemusicarchive.org and jamendo.com

News: Are brain areas that produce movement involved in anticipating it? How can we reduce motion sickness? Articles: Alleviating Simulator Sickness with Galvanic Cutaneous Stimulation An action-incongruent secondary task modulates prediction accuracy in experienced performers: evidence for motor simulation   More information http://www.perceptionactionpodcast.libsyn.com/ My Research Gate Page (pdfs of my articles) My ASU Web page Podcast Facebook page (videos, pics, etc) Twitter: @Shakeywaits Email: robgray@asu.edu   Credits:  JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound – Bad News Jonathan Coulton - Re: Your Brains   via freemusicarchive.org

Why do great athletes claim that on some nights baseballs look as big as a grapefruit, basketball hoops are like oceans and things move in slow motion? Are they just blowing a lot of hot air or is this really the way they see the world?  In this episode, I explore embodied perception in sport…the idea that the way we see the world changes as a function of our action capabilities (e.g., whether we are an expert or novice, whether we are fresh or fatigued, etc). I also consider how we might take advantage of these effects in sports training programs. What Grinds My Gears: Publishing    Links to articles discussed: Embodied Perception and the Economy of Action Embodied perception in sport Apparent Ball Size Is Correlated With Batting Average Being selective at the plate: processing dependence between perceptual variables relates to hitting goals and performance Action-specific effects in aviation: What determines judged runway size? Target-directed visual attention is a prerequisite for action-specific perception How “Paternalistic” Is Spatial Perception?  An Embodied Approach to Perception: By What Units Are Visual Perceptions Scaled? Action’s Effect on Perception Size estimates remain stable in the face of differences in performance outcome variability in an aiming task Attentional focus, perceived target size, and movement kinematics under performance pressure   More information http://www.perceptionactionpodcast.libsyn.com/ My Research Gate Page (pdfs of my articles) My ASU Web page Podcast Facebook page (videos, pics, etc) Twitter: @Shakeywaits Email: robgray@asu.edu   Credits: The Flamin' Groovies - Shake Some Action JoosTVD – Bigger Things The Jacobins – Slow Motion Leather Uppers – Bigger Than a Breadbox Ergo Phizmiz – Pressures from Golf Reigning Sound - Straight Shooter    via freemusicarchive.org

News: Can the threat of losing $50K on one putt make a pro golfer choke? Why is "back again" shorter than there?  Articles: The impact of pressure on performance: Evidence from the PGA TOUR The Return Trip Is Felt Shorter Only Postdictively: A Psychophysiological Study of the Return Trip Effect   More information http://www.perceptionactionpodcast.libsyn.com/ My Research Gate Page (pdfs of my articles) My ASU Web page Podcast Facebook page (videos, pics, etc) Twitter: @Shakeywaits Email: robgray@asu.edu   Credits:  JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound – Bad News via freemusicarchive.org    

How does an athlete get their glove, racquet, hand, or foot to the right place at the right time to hit, catch or strike a moving object? In this episode, I explore visual information that can be used to judge the time to contact and direction of motion of an approaching object and how it can be applied to the outfielder problem.   Research Confessions: The time I nearly published completely artifactual results   Links to articles discussed: The Black Cloud Lee’s 1976 paper Grasping tau Accuracy of estimating time to collision using binocular and monocular information Estimating the time to collision with a rotating nonspherical object The visual perception of motion in depth Catching a baseball: OAC How baseball outfielders determine where to run to catch fly balls Unconfounding the direction of motion in depth, time to passage and rotation rate of an approaching object Motion perception and driving: predicting performance through testing and shortening braking reaction times through training   IOVD Figure http://i110.photobucket.com/albums/n103/rgrayaction/IOVD%20Fig.jpg   More information http://www.perceptionactionpodcast.libsyn.com/ My Research Gate Page (pdfs of my articles) My ASU Web page Podcast Facebook page (videos, pics, etc) Twitter: @Shakeywaits Email: robgray@asu.edu   Credits: The Flamin' Groovies - Shake Some Action Between the Eyes – Christian Milone Catch Me, I’m Falling – Oblivion’s Garden Farmertan  - Ugly Truth   via freemusicarchive.org

How do great athletes seem to know what is going to happen next?  What information to they use to predict the next serve will be cross court instead of down the line, how does a baseball batter know the next pitch will be a fastball, and how does an NFL quarterback know the defense will blitz? Can these abilities be improved through training? In this episode I explore the topic of anticipation in sports.  What Grinds My Gears: Conference false advertising and fishing in movement science experiments   Temporal occlusion video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8idV0V1Is8    Links to articles discussed: Anticipation in squash: differences in advance cue utilization between expert and novice players Can the anticipatory skills of experts be learned by novices? Anticipation skill in a real-world task: measurement, training, and transfer in tennis Behavior of college baseball players in a virtual batting task A model of motor inhibition for a complex skill: baseball batting Expert anticipatory skill in striking sports: a review and a model The Moneyball Problem: What is the best way to present situational statistics to an athlete? On the continuing problem of inappropriate learning measures: Comment on Wulf et al. (2014) and Wulf et al. (2015)   More information http://www.perceptionactionpodcast.libsyn.com/ My Research Gate Page (pdfs of my articles) My ASU Web page Podcast Facebook page (videos, pics, etc) Twitter: @Shakeywaits Email: robgray@asu.edu   Credits: The Flamin' Groovies - Shake Some Action The Body Breaks – Devendra Banhart I Can See the Future - Eleni Mandell  I Can See the Future - Lo Fi Is Sci Fi Reigning Sound – Straight Shooter   via freemusicarchive.org

What should an athlete look at when performing their sport?  For example, should a soccer goalkeeper keep their eye on the shooter’s leg when trying to stop a penalty kick or on their upper body?  Should a golfer look at the ball or the hole when putting?  Do expert athletes look at different things than novices? Is it really possible to always keep your eye on the ball? In this episode, I examine the role of eye movements in sports. Research Confessions: My first batting simulator experiment and the importance of keeping conditions in an experiment the same   Links to articles mentioned in the podcast:  Visual search, anticipation and expertise in soccer goalkeepers Anticipation and visual search behaviour in expert soccer goalkeepers Visual search strategies of baseball batters: eye movements during the preparatory phase of batting The role of central and peripheral vision in expert decision making Gaze control in putting Quiet eye duration, expertise, and task complexity in near and far aiming tasks The "quiet eye" and motor performance: task demands matter! Visual Movements of Batters Why can't batters keep their eyes on the ball? From eye movements to actions: how batsmen hit the ball The Head Tracks and Gaze Predicts: How the World’s Best Batters Hit a Ball Quiet Eye Training Facilitates Competitive Putting Performance in Elite Golfers   More information http://www.perceptionactionpodcast.libsyn.com/ My Research Gate Page (pdfs of my articles) My ASU Web page Podcast Facebook page (videos, pics, etc) Twitter: @Shakeywaits Email: robgray@asu.edu   Credits: The Flamin' Groovies - Shake Some Action Still Pluto – Open Up Your Eyes Two Prong – Search Your Eyes The Rusty Bells – Drop Your Eyes Justin Townes Earle – Mama’s Eyes Farmertan - Ugly Truth via freemusicarchive.org  

Since the early 1980's, there have been several vision training programs developed which propose to improve the vision of athletes resulting in an associated improvement in their sports performance. Do these training programs actually work?  Or could practice time be put to better use?  In this episode, I review the research that has evaluated the effectiveness of these programs.   Links to articles mentioned in podcast: Do generalized visual training programmes for sport really work? High-performance vision training improves batting statistics for University of Cincinnati baseball players Enhancing Ice Hockey Skills Through Stroboscopic Visual Training The Impact of a Sports Vision Training Program in Youth Field Hockey Players Improved vision and on-field performance in baseball through perceptual learning The BASES Expert Statement on the Effectiveness of Vision Training Programmes   More information http://www.perceptionactionpodcast.libsyn.com/ My Research Gate Page (pdfs of my articles) My ASU Web page Podcast Facebook page (videos, pics, etc) Twitter: @Shakeywaits Email: robgray@asu.edu Credits: Opening music: "Shake Some Action" by The Flamin' Groovies via freemusicarchive.org