Female athletes explicitly gesture in emotional situations.

Introduction: Both appraisal emotion approaches and self-regulation theory emphasize that appraising an event as conducive or detrimental to one's current goals may trigger an affective response that can be observed nonverbally. Because there may be a female advantage in the inhibition and self-regulation of emotions, we hypothesized that female but not male athletes regulate emotions during sports through explicit nonverbal behaviors.

Methods: All nonverbal hand movement behavior of right-handed female and male tennis athletes was recorded during competitive matches.

Relative age effect inverts when looking at career performance in elite youth academy soccer.

The aim of this study was to investigate the well-known selection bias favouring players born earlier in the year commonly referred to as the Relative Age Effect (RAE). Therefore, we analysed a group of top-tier youth academy players. The players joined and left the youth academy at different stages, where the first stage was at 8 years (U9) and the last stage was at 18 years of age (U19).

The obligation to succeed when it matters the most-The influence of skill and pressure on the success in football penalty kicks.

In order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the influence of skill and pressure on the success in football penalty kicks, we analyzed 1711 penalties taken over a 15-year period in major international tournaments. We conducted a multiple correspondence analysis in order to reduce six variables that are associated with skill and pressure to two dimensions that reflect our target concepts. Then, we used these two factors as independent variables in a logistic regression and fit different models using three binary dependent variables.

English goalkeepers are not responsible for England's poor performance in penalty shootouts in the past.

Scrutinizing public opinion is one of the central goals of science as the divergence between public opinion and scientific evidence can have negative consequences. The present study aims to further investigate the alleged English 'penalty curse' and determine if it can be linked to the prevalent stereotype of the 'English goalkeeper problem'. We analyzed a large sample of 2379 penalty kicks that 629 different goalkeepers faced in World Cups and European Championships, as well as in the Champions and Europa League by comparing the goalkeeper success rates of different nations by fitting a generalized linear model (binomial regression) to the data.

Nonverbal pre-performance expressions of professional darts players distinguish between good and poor performance.

The present research attempted to extend prior research that showed that thin-slices of pre-performance nonverbal behavior (NVB) of professional darts players gives valid information to observers about subsequent performance tendencies. Specifically, we investigated what kind of nonverbal cues were associated with success and informed thin-slice ratings. Participants (N = 61) were first asked to estimate the performance of a random sample of videos showing the preparatory NVB of professional darts players (N = 47) either performing well (470 clips) or poorly (470 clips).

Coding Body Language in Sports: The Nonverbal Behavior Coding System for Soccer Penalties.

Nonverbal behavior (NVB) plays an important role in sports. However, it has been difficult to measure, as no coding schemes exist to objectively measure NVB in sports. Therefore, the authors adapted the Body Action and Posture Coding System to the context of soccer penalties, validated it, and initially used this system (Nonverbal Behavior Coding System for Soccer Penalties [NBCSP]) to explore NVB in penalties.

English Football Players are not as Bad at Kicking Penalties as Commonly Assumed.

The previous performance of the English men's national football team in penalty shootouts has led to the widespread stereotype that English football players are particularly bad at scoring penalties. Research has proposed possible reasons behind this alleged "penalty curse". When looking at these reasons, the question arises if English football players per se have trouble scoring penalty kicks.

Long rallies and next rally performances in elite men's and women's badminton.

The aim of the present study was twofold: (i) to identify contextual variables associated with the occurrence of long rallies while investigating time-related and technical parameters; and (ii) to identify performance differences between long rallies and the subsequent rally when accounting for match-context and the players' sex. The sample included 60 men's (n = 4,475 rallies) and 60 women's (n = 4,490 rallies) matches randomly selected from the 2015 World Badminton Super Series and World Championship (the final sample included long rallies that had an immediate next point played: n = 1,734 and n = 1,644 rallies for male and female players, respectively). The long rallies represented 19.

Claims in Surfing: The Influence of Emotional Postperformance Expressions on Performance Evaluations.

The goal of the present research was to investigate whether claims (postperformance nonverbal emotional expressions) influence people in evaluating performance during surf contests. To test this research question, the authors sampled videos from professional surf contests and asked laypeople (Experiment 1; N = 110) and surf judges (Experiment 2; N = 41) to evaluate the performance in 2 online experiments. A subset of the surfing performances showed surfers displaying postperformance emotional expressions (claims), while another subset showed the same performances without the claims (nonverbal emotional expressions).

A serial-position curve in high-performance darts: The effect of visuomotor calibration on throwing accuracy.

The aim of the present research was to test if the fine-tuning of skilled motor actions benefits from proximate previous actions via a visuomotor calibration process. In professional darts, each player cycles through different activities: three darts are thrown with a rather smooth sequence of movements, the darts are retrieved from the dartboard, the other player throws his or her darts and retrieves them, the next three darts are thrown, retrieved, etc. We hypothesized that these cycles give rise to a serial-position curve for the precision of darts as a result of a particular kind of warm-up decrement.

Analysis of elite soccer players' performance before and after signing a new contract.

The aim of the current study was to analyse performance differences of football players 2-years prior and the year after signing a new contract (the following year) while taking playing position, nationality, player's role, team ability, and age into account. The sample was comprised of 249 players (n = 109 defenders, n = 113 midfielders; and n = 27 forwards) from four of the major European Leagues (Bundesliga, English FA Premier League, Ligue 1, and La Liga) during the seasons 2008 to 2015. The dependent variables studied were: shooting accuracy, defense (the sum of defensive actions, tackles, blocks, and interceptions), yellow cards, red cards, passing accuracy, tackle success, and minutes played per match.

What Modern Sports Competitions Can Tell Us About Human Nature.

To fully understand human behavior, it seems inevitable to approach it from an evolutionary perspective. However, much of human behavior has been overwritten by culture and society, thus allowing little insight into how it might have evolved amid natural and sexual selection. Here, I argue that sports competitions, although a cultural phenomenon in themselves, strip away many of the cultural layers and reveal more primary, rudimentary aspects of human behavior.

Thin Slices of Athletes' Nonverbal Behavior Give Away Game Location: Testing the Territoriality Hypothesis of the Home Game Advantage.

The present research investigated whether perceivers could detect who is playing at home or away in soccer matches based on thin slices of professional (Experiment 1) and amateur (Experiment 3) athletes' nonverbal behavior prior to the match and whether perceivers rated athletes playing at home relatively higher on behavioral dimensions (Experiments 2 and 3) linked to territoriality. In Experiment 1 ( N = 80), participants watched short videos depicting soccer players prior to a UEFA Champions League match and rated whether athletes were more likely to be playing at home or away. In Experiment 2 (two groups N = 102 and N = 101), perceivers rated these videos in terms of assertiveness, dominance, and aggression.

What's past is past: Neither perceptual preactivation nor prior motivational relevance decrease subsequent inattentional blindness.

Inattentional blindness-the phenomenon that clearly visible, yet currently unexpected objects go unnoticed when our attention is focused elsewhere-is an ecologically valid failure of awareness. It is currently subject to debate whether previous events and experiences determine whether or not inattentional blindness occurs. Using a simple two-phase paradigm in the present study, we found that the likelihood of missing an unexpected object due to inattention did not change when its defining characteristic (its color) was perceptually preactivated (Experiment 1; N = 188).

Goofy vs. Regular: Laterality effects in surfing.

The aim of the present study was to test if lateral preferences of surfers are associated with behaviour and performance depending on the direction of a breaking wave. We hypothesized that wave direction and surf stance interact in creating favourable or debilitative performance demands as surfers are either facing the wave (frontside) or the wave is breaking in the back of the surfers (backside). Study 1 was an online survey collecting self-report data of recreational surfers (n = 394).

Nonverbal Communication of Confidence in Soccer Referees: An Experimental Test of Darwin's Leakage Hypothesis.

The goal of the present paper was to investigate whether soccer referees' nonverbal behavior (NVB) differed based on the difficulty of their decisions and whether perceivers could detect these systematic variations. On the one hand, communicating confidence via NVB is emphasized in referee training. On the other hand, it seems feasible from a theoretical point of view that particularly following relatively difficult decisions referees have problems controlling their NVB.

The Influence of Unsportsmanlike Fouls on Basketball Teams' Performance According to Context-Related Variables.

The aim of the current study was to analyze the temporal effects that unsportsmanlike fouls may have on basketball teams' scoring performance under consideration of context-related variables. The authors analyzed 130 unsportsmanlike fouls from 362 elite basketball games (men's and women's Olympic Games, European and World Championships). The context-related variables studied were score-line, quality of opposition, timeout situation, minutes remaining, and player status.

Judgments of Nonverbal Behaviour by Children with High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder: Can they Detect Signs of Winning and Losing from Brief Video Clips?

Typically developing children are able to judge who is winning or losing from very short clips of video footage of behaviour between active match play across a number of sports. Inferences from "thin slices" (short video clips) allow participants to make complex judgments about the meaning of posture, gesture and body language. This study extends the use of the thin slice research paradigm to children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Attention towards the goalkeeper and distraction during penalty shootouts in association football: a retrospective analysis of penalty shootouts from 1984 to 2012.

In the present study, we tested the consequences of attention towards goalkeepers in association football penalty shootouts that have exclusively been derived from laboratory experiments. We conducted a retrospective analysis of all penalty shootouts during FIFA World Cups (1986-2010) and UEFA European Football Championships (1984-2012). We linked key variables of previous laboratory research to observable behaviour in the field that was coded by two independent coders.

The winner takes it all: Event-related brain potentials reveal enhanced motivated attention toward athletes' nonverbal signals of leading.

Observers of sports can reliably estimate who is leading or trailing based on nonverbal cues. Most likely, this is due to an adaptive mechanism of detecting motivationally relevant signals such as high status, superiority, and dominance. We reasoned that the relevance of leading athletes should lead to a sustained attentional prioritization.

Does working memory capacity predict cross-modally induced failures of awareness?

People often fail to notice unexpected stimuli when they are focusing attention on another task. Most studies of this phenomenon address visual failures induced by visual attention tasks (inattentional blindness). Yet, such failures also occur within audition (inattentional deafness), and people can even miss unexpected events in one sensory modality when focusing attention on tasks in another modality.

The Influence of Attention Set, Working Memory Capacity, and Expectations on Inattentional Blindness.

The probability of inattentional blindness, the failure to notice an unexpected object when attention is engaged on some primary task, is influenced by contextual factors like task demands, features of the unexpected object, and the observer's attention set. However, predicting who will notice an unexpected object and who will remain inattentionally blind has proven difficult, and the evidence that individual differences in cognition affect noticing remains ambiguous. We hypothesized that greater working memory capacity might modulate the effect of attention sets on noticing because working memory is associated with the ability to focus attention selectively.