Towards the Development of a Conceptual Model of Expertise in Cricket Batting: A Grounded Theory Approach

Data from semi-structured interviews with 14 male expert cricket batsmen, coaches, and administrators were used to generate a conceptual model of expertise in this sport. In the model, a favorable socio-developmental environment (support, vast investment in creative and challenging play, sibling rivalry) provides the essential foundation for the development of positive psychological attributes (mental toughness, self-belief and confidence, ability to cope with adversity, adoption of individualized routines/rituals), technical skill mastery (optimal balance, speed of downswing, versatility of shot execution) and superior visual-perceptual skill. Intrinsic motivators (fun, enjoyment, challenge and achievement, desire to be the best, “love of the game”, camaraderie) are regarded as essential to continuation and progression along developmental pathways. Facets of contemporary society and its constraints on free play emerged as one of the major limitations to the future development of expertise. The model has immediate implications for coaching practice, developmental policy, and future research approaches to identifying and nurturing sports talent.     

An implicit basis for the retention benefits of random practice

The cognitive effort explanations of contextual interference (CI) and implicit motor learning represent a paradox in which cognitive involvement is seen to be advantageous or disadvantageous for learning. The authors aimed to resolve this paradox by measuring cognitive effort and working memory dependence during low and high CI practice on two Australian Rules Football tasks (kicking and handball). Measures of cognitive effort included: kicking and handball outcome performance during acquisition and during a test of retention, performance on a probe reaction time task during a sample of acquisition trials, and self-reported levels of cognitive effort. Measures of implicit and explicit learning included kicking and handball performance during a secondary task transfer, and self-report verbal protocols (number of verbal rules and hypotheses reported). The results suggest that high CI may cause an implicit mode of learning, perhaps due to the interference caused by task switching. However, these findings are restricted to the more complex of the 2 tasks (kicking).     

Investigating the anticipatory nature of pattern perception in sport

The aim of the present study was to examine the anticipatory nature of pattern perception in sport by using static and moving basketball patterns across three different display types. Participants of differing skill levels were included in order to determine whether the effects would be moderated by the knowledge and experience of the observer in the same manner reported previously for simple images. The results from a pattern recognition task showed that both expert and recreational participants were more likely to anticipate the next likely state of a pattern when it was presented as a moving video, but only the experts appeared to have the depth of understanding required to elicit the same anticipatory encoding for patterns presented as schematic images. The results extend those reported in previous research and provide further evidence of an anticipatory encoding in pattern perception for images containing complex, interrelated patterns.     

Knowledge of the ordinal position of list items in pigeons

Ordinal knowledge is a fundamental aspect of advanced cognition. It is self-evident that humans represent ordinal knowledge, and over the past 20 years it has become clear that nonhuman primates share this ability. In contrast, evidence that nonprimate species represent ordinal knowledge is missing from the comparative literature. To address this issue, in the present experiment we trained pigeons on three 4-item lists and then tested them with derived lists in which, relative to the training lists, the ordinal position of the items was either maintained or changed. Similar to the findings with human and nonhuman primates, our pigeons performed markedly better on the maintained lists compared to the changed lists, and displayed errors consistent with the view that they used their knowledge of ordinal position to guide responding on the derived lists. These findings demonstrate that the ability to acquire ordinal knowledge is not unique to the primate lineage. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved).     

A positional coding mechanism in pigeons after learning multiple three-item lists

Pigeons were trained on three three-item lists (List 1: A₁ → B₁ → C_1; List 2: A₂ → B₂ → C_2; List 3: A₃ → B₃ → C₃). After sessions in which any one of the three lists could be presented on a trial, derived-maintained list and derived-changed list probe trials were introduced. The derived list probe trials were composed of three items, one drawn from each of the training lists. On derived-maintained probe trials, each item was in the same ordinal position it occupied during training (e.g., A₃ → B₁ → C₂). On derived-changed probe trials, items that occupied the second and third position during training were exchanged (e.g., A₂ → C₃ → B₁). The performance of subjects on derived-maintained probe trials was significantly above chance and no different to that observed on the training lists. In contrast, subjects’ performance on derived-changed probe trials was significantly below chance. To our knowledge, this is the first study that has demonstrated pigeons are able to learn and retain multiple three-item lists. In addition, subjects’ performance on the derived-maintained probe trials suggests that they acquire knowledge of each list item’s ordinal position when learning multiple lists.     

Agent-based Theories of Right Action

In this paper, I develop an objection to agent-based accounts of right action. Agent-based accounts of right action attempt to derive moral judgment of actions from judgment of the inner quality of virtuous agents and virtuous agency. A moral theory ought to be something that moral agents can permissibly use in moral deliberation. I argue for a principle that captures this intuition and show that, for a broad range of other-directed virtues and motives, agent-based accounts of right action fail to satisfy this principle.     

Pathogens, personality, and culture: disease prevalence predicts worldwide variability in sociosexuality, extraversion, and openness to experience

Previous research has documented cross-cultural differences in personality traits, but the origins of those differences remain unknown. The authors investigate the possibility that these cultural differences can be traced, in part, to regional differences in the prevalence in infectious diseases. Three specific hypotheses are deduced, predicting negative relationships between disease prevalence and (a) unrestricted sociosexuality, (b) extraversion, and (c) openness to experience. These hypotheses were tested empirically with methods that employed epidemiological atlases in conjunction with personality data collected from individuals in dozens of countries worldwide. Results were consistent with all three hypotheses: In regions that have historically suffered from high levels of infectious diseases, people report lower mean levels of sociosexuality, extraversion, and openness. Alternative explanations are addressed, and possible underlying mechanisms are discussed.     

What's in a name? Typicality and relatedness effects in children

We studied how category typicality and out-of-category relatedness affect speeded category verification (vote "yes" if pictured object is clothing) in typically developing 4- to 14-year-olds and adults. Stimuli were typical and atypical category objects (e.g., pants, glove) and related and unrelated out-of-category objects (e.g., necklace, soup). Typical and unrelated out-of-category objects exhibited preferential processing (faster reaction times and fewer errors). Variations in typicality and relatedness disproportionately influenced children's performance, with developmental improvement associated with both verbal and nonverbal factors. Underextension versus overextension errors seemed to be associated with independent factors, namely multifaceted maturational factors versus receptive vocabulary skill, respectively. Errors were infrequent, suggesting spontaneous taxonomic classification by all participants. An experiment with printed words in adults replicated results, indicating that typicality and relatedness effects reflected organizational principles of the semantic system, not picture-related processes. This research establishes the viability of an online approach to assessing automatic components of semantic organization in children.     

Long-lasting semantic context effects in the spoken production of object names

A number of recent studies have found that objects are named more slowly in the context of same-category items than in the context of items from various semantic categories. Several experiments reported here indicated that this semantic effect is relatively persistent because it was essentially unaffected by the presence of interspersed filler items. The authors suggest that the effect is specific to the retrieval of lexical-semantic codes and characterize mechanisms that could support the effect at this processing level, such as incremental learning in the links between conceptual and lexical codes and the temporary increase of lexical resting levels. The results underscore the necessity of incorporating mechanisms of long-term adaptation into current models of spoken production.