Increasing auditory intensity enhances temporal but deteriorates spatial accuracy in a virtual interception task

Humans are quite accurate and precise in interception performance. So far, it is still unclear what role auditory information plays in spatiotemporal accuracy and consistency during interception. In the current study, interception performance was measured as the spatiotemporal accuracy and consistency of when and where a virtual ball was intercepted on a visible line displayed on a screen based on auditory information alone. We predicted that participants would more accurately indicate when the ball would cross a target line than where it would cross the line, because human hearing is particularly sensitive to temporal parameters. In a within-subject design, we manipulated auditory intensity (52, 61, 70, 79, 88 dB) using a sound stimulus programmed to be perceived over the screen in an inverted C-shape trajectory. Results showed that the louder the sound, the better was temporal accuracy, but the worse was spatial accuracy. We argue that louder sounds increased attention toward auditory information when performing interception judgments. How balls are intercepted and practically how intensity of sound may add to temporal accuracy and consistency is discussed from a theoretical perspective of modality-specific interception behavior.

Differences in Decision-Making Behavior Between Elite and Amateur Team-Handball Players in a Near-Game Test Situation

Athletic features distinguishing experts from non-experts in team sports are relevant for performance analyses, talent identification and successful training. In this respect, perceptual-cognitive factors like decision making have been proposed to be important predictor of talent but, however, assessing decision making in team sports remains a challenging endeavor. In particular, it is now known that decisions expressed by verbal reports or micro-movements in the laboratory differ from those actually made in on-field situations in play. To address this point, our study compared elite and amateur players’ decision-making behavior in a near-game test environment including sport-specific sensorimotor responses. Team-handball players (N = 44) were asked to respond as quickly as possible to representative, temporally occluded attack sequences in a team-handball specific defense environment on a contact plate system. Specifically, participants had to choose and perform the most appropriate out of four prespecified, defense response actions. The frequency of responses and decision time were used as dependent variables representing decision-making behavior. We found that elite players responded significantly more often with offensive responses (p < 0.05, odds ratios: 2.76–3.00) in left-handed attack sequences. Decision time decreased with increasing visual information, but no expertise effect was found. We suppose that expertise-related knowledge and processing of kinematic information led to distinct decision-making behavior between elite and amateur players, evoked in a domain-specific and near-game test setting. Results also indicate that the quality of a decision might be of higher relevance than the required time to decide. Findings illustrate application opportunities in the context of performance analyses and talent identification processes.

The impact of pitch on tempo-spatial accuracy and precision in intercepting a virtually moving ball

In two experiments, horizontal and vertical orientated sounds moved in parabolas. Participants had to touch a screen to indicate where and when a virtual moving ball would cross a visible line. We predicted that due to the sensitivity of the auditory system to temporal information, manipulations of pitch should affect temporal errors more than spatial errors. Stimuli were sound sources at five different pitches moving along a parabola produced through loudspeakers mounted around a touch screen. Results showed pitch effects on spatial constant and spatial variable errors when the parabola was horizontally oriented (Exp. 1), and on temporal constant errors in vertically oriented parabolas (Exp. 2). We conclude that temporal and spatial precision in interception tasks were affected differently by pitch manipulations and require consideration in future studies when assessing the impact of auditory information on catching virtually moving balls.

Interrelations Between Temporal and Spatial Cognition: The Role of Modality-Specific Processing

Temporal and spatial representations are not independent of each other. Two conflicting theories provide alternative hypotheses concerning the specific interrelations between temporal and spatial representations. The asymmetry hypothesis (based on the conceptual metaphor theory, Lakoff and Johnson, 1980) predicts that temporal and spatial representations are asymmetrically interrelated such that spatial representations have a stronger impact on temporal representations than vice versa. In contrast, the symmetry hypothesis (based on a theory of magnitude, Walsh, 2003) predicts that temporal and spatial representations are symmetrically interrelated. Both theoretical approaches have received empirical support. From an embodied cognition perspective, we argue that taking sensorimotor processes into account may be a promising steppingstone to explain the contradictory findings. Notably, different modalities are differently sensitive to the processing of time and space. For instance, auditory information processing is more sensitive to temporal than spatial information, whereas visual information processing is more sensitive to spatial than temporal information. Consequently, we hypothesized that different sensorimotor tasks addressing different modalities may account for the contradictory findings. To test this, we critically reviewed relevant literature to examine which modalities were addressed in time-space mapping studies. Results indicate that the majority of the studies supporting the asymmetry hypothesis applied visual tasks for both temporal and spatial representations. Studies supporting the symmetry hypothesis applied mainly auditory tasks for the temporal domain, but visual tasks for the spatial domain. We conclude that the use of different tasks addressing different modalities may be the primary reason for (a)symmetric effects of space on time, instead of a genuine (a)symmetric mapping.

Delayed Latency of Postural Muscles of Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities

Individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID) (50 < IQ < 79) show impaired motor and postural control, these impairments are highly related to falls and injuries. Recent studies demonstrated these impairments are related with fine and gross motor development, which are more strongly associated with cognition, and consequently language for individuals with ID than for without ID. Despite these studies, little is known about the structure and functioning of this population's spinal cord, which is highly involved in postural control. The aim of our study was to assess the latency of the reflex responses in postural muscles after unexpected lateral external perturbations, in individuals with intellectual disabilities compared to typically developed participants. We assessed 16 participants with intellectual disabilities, 9 males and 7 females (aged 24.06 ± 8.66 years) and 20 typical developed participants (CG), 11 females, 9 males, (aged 21.20±1.96 years). While the participants were in an upright standing position electromyography was used to collect data from M. obliquus externus abdominis (OE) muscles, which were activated by unpredictable perturbations applied by a servomotor on a hand-held grip, following the lateral external perturbation to the trunk. The intellectual disabilities group presented contralateral OE muscles latency of 85.71±27.24 ms, and CG group presented 68.62±10.25 ms, no differences was found. Ipsilateral OE muscles latency also did not differs between the groups, ID group showed 96.60±30.20 ms and CG group showed 95.57±33.53 ms. Our study furthers the knowledge about the muscular activity of individuals with intellectual disabilities. The present experimental results may suggest unique spinal cord processing of individuals with intellectual disabilities when they are faced with unexpected lateral external perturbations.

Impairments in the Visual Processing of Global Biological Motion Cues in Down Syndrome

Down syndrome (DS) is one of the most common chromosomal disorders and is often associated with a number of motor and cognitive impairments. Little research has been dedicated to investigating the perceptual abilities of individuals with DS. The visual processing of biological motion has been shown to be impaired in DS. It has been proposed that these impairments may stem from an inability to process the global patterns of full-body motion produced by a moving actor; however, this has not been explicitly investigated. We tested groups of participants with and without DS on a task requiring the visual discrimination of point-light walkers from spatially scrambled versions of point-light walkers. Participants with DS demonstrated poorer performance and slower reaction times on the task than healthy controls. From these results, we conclude that biological motion processing is impaired in DS and that this deficit is related to an inability to integrate global configural cues. In a second experiment, individuals with DS were able to discriminate the direction in which laterally translating walkers moved, suggesting that the global motion processing deficit observed in Experiment 1 is specific to biological motion recognition and does not generalise to other types of global motion.