Enhancing Perceptual-Motor Skills in Sports: The Role of Ecological Sounds.

Starting approximately from the beginning of the new millennium, a series of studies highlighted that auditory information deriving from biological motion can significantly influence the behavioral, cognitive and neurophysiological processes involved in the perception and execution of complex movements. In particular, it was observed that an appropriate use of sounds deriving from one's own movement promotes improvements in the movement execution itself. Two main approaches can be used, namely the sonification one or the ecological sound one; the former is based on the conversion of physiological and/or physical movement data into sound, while the latter is based on the use of auditory recordings of movement sounds as models.

A systematic investigation reveals that Ishihara et al.'s (2008) STEARC effect only emerges when time is directly assessed.

The Spatial-TEmporal Association of Response Codes (STEARC) effect (Ishihara et al. in Cortex 44:454-461, 2008) is evidence that time is spatially coded along the horizontal axis. It consists in faster left-hand responses to early onset timing and faster right-hand responses to late onset timing.

A complete season with attendance restrictions confirms the relevant contribution of spectators to home advantage and referee bias in association football.

Background: Due to the unfortunate pandemic situation, the phenomena of home advantage and referee bias in sports have recently received a particular research attention, especially in association football. In this regard, several studies were conducted on the last portion of the 2019-20 season: the majority of them suggests a reduction-but not the elimination-of the two phenomena, with some exceptions in which no reduction was found or, at the other extreme, the phenomena were not observed at all.

Methods: The continuation of the pandemic made it possible to replicate the previous studies considering the complete 2020-21 season, thus with the important added value of having a fully balanced home/away schedule-and a higher number of matches-in the various leagues.

Further Empirical Evidence on Patrick Hughes' Reverspectives: A Pilot Study.

Reverspectives are paintings created by the English artist Patrick Hughes. They are 3D structures, for example, pyramids or prisms, which elicit an illusory depth perception that corresponds to the reverse of the physical depth layout. Rogers and Gyani state that "".

Contrasting a Misinterpretation of the Reverse Contrast.

The reverse contrast is a perceptual phenomenon in which the effect of the classical simultaneous lightness contrast is reversed. In classic simultaneous lightness contrast configurations, a gray surrounded by black is perceived lighter than an identical gray surrounded by white, but in the reverse contrast configurations, the perceptual outcome is the opposite: a gray surrounded by black appears darker than the same gray surrounded by white. The explanation provided for the reverse contrast (by different authors) is the belongingness of the gray targets to a more complex configuration.

University Students' Hangover May Affect Cognitive Research.

University students are the most employed category of participants in cognitive research. However, researchers cannot fully control what their participants do the night before the experiments (e.g.

The sound of silence in association football: Home advantage and referee bias decrease in matches played without spectators.

The home advantage and unconscious referee bias are two well-documented phenomena in professional sports, especially in association football. Among the various factors determining them, the crowd noise is considered as one of the most relevant; yet, the majority of previous studies could not isolate its contribution. The possibility to study the effects of crowd noise - or, better, of its absence - in an ecological context was given by the matches played behind closed doors due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Former Road Cyclists Still Involved in Cycling Report Lower Burnout Levels Than Those Who Abandoned This Sport.

Despite the numerous benefits associated with sport practice, many children and adolescents end up quitting it year after year, with a stable dropout rate between 10 and 19 years of age. Among the causes of sport abandonment, the scientific literature highlights the presence of burnout as a fundamental factor. In this regard, the aim of the present study was to investigate the levels of the three components of sport burnout-emotional and physical exhaustion, reduced sense of accomplishment, and sport devaluation-reported by a sample of young (former) athletes, depending on whether their sport abandonment was relative (i.

The influence of encoding and testing directions on retrieval of spatial information in explored and described environments.

The verbal descriptions of an environment elicit a spatial mental model, in which the linear disposition of the described objects might be related to the properties of the description. In particular the direction from which the environment is encoded might shape the spatial mental model, as a consequence of a cultural bias in reading and writing direction. The aim of the present study was to examine the influence of the direction in which objects are encoded on the retrieval of spatial information.

Pressing Crowd Noise Impairs the Ability of Anxious Basketball Referees to Discriminate Fouls.

The decision-making processes of referees in sports are affected by many factors, including the pressure of spectators. While the home/visitor bias has been previously investigated, the role of crowd noise has been less studied. In the present study, we investigated how the crowd noise (calm vs.

The Influence of the Encoding Modality on Spatial Navigation for Sighted and Late-Blind People.

People usually rely on sight to encode spatial information, becoming aware of other sensory cues when deprived of vision. In the absence of vision, it has been demonstrated that physical movements and spatial descriptions can effectively provide the spatial information that is necessary for the construction of an adequate spatial mental model. However, no study has previously compared the influence of these encoding modalities on complex movements such as human spatial navigation within real room-size environments.

Predicting the length of volleyball serves: The role of early auditory and visual information.

In light of the growing body of research that is revealing the significant role of the auditory domain in sport, the present study aims to investigate the contribution of early auditory and visual information to the prediction of volleyball serves' length. To this purpose, three within-subjects experiments were run, which differed among them in terms of stimuli (audiovisual congruent vs audiovisual incongruent; audio only vs video only) and/or in terms of number of possible answers. In particular, expert volleyball players were asked to predict the length of temporally occluded overhand serves, choosing among either two or three possible landing sectors.

The Use of Footstep Sounds as Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation for Gait Rehabilitation in Parkinson's Disease: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: The use of rhythmic auditory stimulation (RAS) has been proven useful in the management of gait disturbances associated with Parkinson's disease (PD). Typically, the RAS consists of metronome or music-based sounds (artificial RAS), while ecological footstep sounds (ecological RAS) have never been used for rehabilitation programs.

Objective: The aim of this study was to compare the effects of a rehabilitation program integrated either with ecological or with artificial RAS.

Walking during the encoding of described environments enhances a heading-independent spatial representation.

Previous studies demonstrated that physical movement enhanced spatial updating in described environments. However, those movements were executed only after the encoding of the environment, minimally affecting the development of the spatial representation. Thus, we investigated whether and how participants could benefit from the execution of physical movement during the encoding of described environments, in terms of enhanced spatial updating.

Effects of Physical Rehabilitation Integrated with Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation on Spatio-Temporal and Kinematic Parameters of Gait in Parkinson's Disease.

Movement rehabilitation by means of physical therapy represents an essential tool in the management of gait disturbances induced by Parkinson's disease (PD). In this context, the use of rhythmic auditory stimulation (RAS) has been proven useful in improving several spatio-temporal parameters, but concerning its effect on gait patterns, scarce information is available from a kinematic viewpoint. In this study, we used three-dimensional gait analysis based on optoelectronic stereophotogrammetry to investigate the effects of 5 weeks of supervised rehabilitation, which included gait training integrated with RAS on 26 individuals affected by PD (age 70.

Perceptual belongingness determines the direction of lightness induction depending on grouping stability and intentionality.

Contrast and assimilation are two opposite perceptual phenomena deriving from the relationships among perceptual elements in a visual field. In contrast, perceptual differences are enhanced; while, in assimilation, they are decreased. Indeed, if contrast or assimilation occurs depends on various factors.

Walking reduces the gap between encoding and sensorimotor alignment effects in spatial updating of described environments.

Spatial updating allows people to keep track of the self-to-object relations during movement. Previous studies demonstrated that physical movement enhanced spatial updating in remote environments, but failed to find the same effect in described environments. However, these studies mainly considered rotation as a physical movement, without examining other types of movement, such as walking.

How do mood states change in a multi-stage cycling competition? Comparing high and low performers.

Background: Our purpose was to investigate: (1) differences in mood states between high and low performers at the beginning and end of the Girobio 2012 cycling race, and in respect to both actual and perceived performance; (2) whether the participants' mood states predicted the actual and perceived performance.

Methods: Profile of Mood States (POMS) of 72 elite cyclists were assessed the day prior to the first (T0) and last stage (T1). At the end of the race, we created two rankings, one based on the total time spent to complete the race (actual ranking) and one based on the average of self-evaluations provided at the end of each stage (perceived ranking).

Ecological sounds affect breath duration more than artificial sounds.

Previous research has demonstrated that auditory rhythms affect both movement and physiological functions. We hypothesized that the ecological sounds of human breathing can affect breathing more than artificial sounds of breathing, varying in tones for inspiration and expiration. To address this question, we monitored the breath duration of participants exposed to three conditions: (a) ecological sounds of breathing, (b) artificial sounds of breathing having equal temporal features as the ecological sounds, (c) no sounds (control).