An in-situ examination of the timing of information pick-up for interception by cricket batsmen of different skill levels

ObjectivesCricket batting is performed under demanding constraints, which requires rapid and accurate decision making for successful achievement of the skill goal. To understand how batsmen negotiate these constraints, the capability of highly skilled and low skilled cricket batsmen to utilise visual information prior to and during sections of ball flight to strike balls delivered by fast bowlers was examined.MethodSix highly skilled and six low skilled batsmen faced different types of balls delivered by three fast bowlers. Batsmen wore vision occlusion spectacles and were required to strike delivered balls, while their vision of the bowler's delivery action and ball flight was selectively occluded. Three vision conditions were randomly designed that included temporal occlusion at: (i) a point prior to ball release (providing only advance information), (ii) a point prior to ball bounce (providing advance and ball flight information) and (iii) no occlusion (where all advance, ball flight and bounce information were visible). Foot movements made forward or backward were assessed as a measure of ball length judgement, while the quality of bat–ball contact was assessed as a measure of interception.ResultsResults demonstrated the superior capability of highly skilled batsmen to utilise information prior to ball release to judge short ball length. Expert batsmen were better able to utilise ball flight information prior to and post-bounce to attain a superior number of bat–ball contacts.ConclusionsFindings demonstrate that the mechanism of experts to deal with task constraints when attempting to intercept a delivered ball is their capability to pick-up visual information to judge ball landing position.     

Preschool children's learning proclivities: When the ritual stance trumps the instrumental stance

Previous research has demonstrated an efficiency bias in social learning whereby young children preferentially imitate the functional actions of a successful individual over an unsuccessful group member. Our aim in the current research was to examine whether this bias remains when actions are presented as conventional rather than instrumental. Preschool children watched videos of an individual and a group member. The individual always demonstrated a successful instrumental action and the group member an unsuccessful action that was either causally transparent or opaque. Highlighting the selective nature of social learning, children copied the group at higher rates when the demonstrated actions were causally opaque than when they were causally transparent. This research draws attention to the influence of conventional/ritual‐like actions on young children's learning choices and emphasizes the role of this orientation in the development of human‐specific cumulative culture.     

Using the theory of planned behaviour to predict screening uptake in two contexts

Given current policy that decisions about screening should be based on informed choice, such decisions should reflect people's values and attitudes. This prospective study compares the attitudes and other cognitive predictors of screening uptake in two contexts: when conducted as part of a routine visit and when it is conducted at a separate, test-specific visit. It was conducted in two hospitals in England, differing in method of screening organisation. 1499 pregnant women offered serum screening for Down Syndrome completed a questionnaire assessing theory of planned behaviour constructs: attitude towards undergoing the test, subjective norms of others, perceived behavioural control and intention to undergo the test.

Intention predicted screening uptake in both screening settings, but more strongly when screening was part of a routine visit. Perceived behavioural control was not predictive of uptake, and only weakly predictive of intention in both settings. Subjective norm predicted intention more strongly when it referred to partner and friends than when it referred to health professionals, in both settings.

Attitude was more strongly predictive of intention to attend screening when screening was organised as a part of routine screening, rather than requiring a separate visit. These results suggest that offering a screening test at a routine visit compared with a separate visit is more likely to facilitated uninformed choices, given the stronger association between attitudes and intention and the absence of an association with the perceived influence of health professionals.     

An anxiety-related bias in semantic activation when processing threat/neutral homographs

Three experiments are reported comparing high and low-trait anxious subjects in terms of their patterns of semantic activation in response to ambiguous primes, with one threat-related and one neutral meaning. Such primes were followed by targets related to either their threat or neutral meaning, or by unrelated targets, in a lexical decision task. Experiments 1 to 3 employed stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of 750 msec, 500 msec, and 1250 msec, respectively. At 500-msec SOA all subjects showed facilitation for both meanings. At 750-msec SOA the only significant priming effect was that for the threat-related meaning in the high-anxiety group, and a similar trend was found at 1250-msec SOA. Consideration of the patterns of priming for targets following ambiguous threat/neutral primes suggest that at the longer SOAs, high-anxiety subjects consciously “lock on” to a threatening interpretation if one has been made available by earlier automatic spreading activation.     

Meta-analysis of work–family conflict mean differences: Does national context matter?

Work–family conflict continues to be a topic of considerable interest to researchers and practitioners across the globe. In the current study, meta-analysis is used to compare cross-national mean differences in work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict across cultural, institutional, and economic aspects of context. No significant differences in work-to-family conflict were detected. Reports of family-to-work conflict were higher in more collectivistic versus more individualistic cultures, in countries with a higher versus a lower economic gender gap, and in countries other than the U.S. versus the U.S.     

Mistakes Around the Clock: Errors in Memory for the Orientation of Numerals

Recent research has demonstrated that when participants are required to draw from memory a standard clock with numbers represented by Roman numerals, they typically misrepresent the four as “IV” rather than as the correct “III.” Participants do not make this mistake when they simply copy the clock while it remains in full view. A reanalysis of the data presented by Richards, French, and Harris (1996) is reported in which we investigated the representation of the orientation of the Roman numerals on the clockface and found that participants in the memory conditions (surprise and forewarned) were more likely than participants in the copy (control) condition to draw the numerals vertically rather than in their correct centripetal orientation. In addition, we found this error was even more likely to occur for participants when they had no warning that a memory task would take place.