The Influence of the 'Trier Social Stress Test' on Free Throw Performance in Basketball: An Interdisciplinary Study.

The aim of the present study was to explore the relationship between stress and sport performance in a controlled setting. The experimental protocol used to induce stress in a basketball free throw was the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) and its control condition (Placebo-TSST). Participants (n = 19), novice basketball players but trained sportspersons, were exposed to two counterbalanced conditions in a crossover design.

A scale-based approach to interdisciplinary research and expertise in sports.

After more than 20 years since the introduction of ecological and dynamical approaches in sports research, their promising opportunity for interdisciplinary research has not been fulfilled yet. The complexity of the research process and the theoretical and empirical difficulties associated with an integrated ecological-dynamical approach have been the major factors hindering the generalisation of interdisciplinary projects in sports sciences. To facilitate this generalisation, we integrate the major concepts from the ecological and dynamical approaches to study behaviour as a multi-scale process.

The integration of temporally shifted visual feedback in a synchronization task: The role of perceptual stability in a visuo-proprioceptive conflict situation.

The present study examined whether the beneficial role of coherently grouped visual motion structures for performing complex (interlimb) coordination patterns can be generalized to synchronization behavior in a visuo-proprioceptive conflict situation. To achieve this goal, 17 participants had to synchronize a self-moved circle, representing the arm movement, with a visual target signal corresponding to five temporally shifted visual feedback conditions (0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of the target cycle duration) in three synchronization modes (in-phase, anti-phase, and intermediate). The results showed that the perception of a newly generated perceptual Gestalt between the visual feedback of the arm and the target signal facilitated the synchronization performance in the preferred in-phase synchronization mode in contrast to the less stable anti-phase and intermediate mode.

Eye-hand coordination asymmetries in manual aiming.

The authors investigated whether movement-planning and feedback-processing abilities associated with the 2 hand-hemisphere systems mediate illusion-induced biases in manual aiming and saccadic eye movements. Although participants' (N = 23) eye movements were biased in the direction expected on the basis of a typical Müller-Lyer configuration, hand movements were unaffected. Most interesting, both left- and right-handers' eye fixation onset and time to hand peak velocity were earlier when they aimed with the left hand than they were when they aimed with the right hand, regardless of the availability of vision for online movement control.

Synchronising horizontal arm movement with transparent motion.

The relationship between perception and motor performance was studied in a situation that required perceptual processing of a complex motion stimulus in which a target signal had to be segmented, selected, and tracked. Participants were asked to move their arm in synchrony with one surface of a transparent motion display in which two surfaces moved horizontally back-and-forth over each other. The quality of tracking performance was measured as a function of bottom-up and top-down perceptual cues and their interplay.