The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of different volleyball-specific attentional focus instructions on arm velocities of a volleyball spike in young female volleyball players using ...the Statistical Parametric Mapping method. Twelve young female volleyball players (13.6 ± 0.6 years old, 1.8 ± 0.8 years of experience in volleyball training) were asked to perform a volleyball spike in a standing position in three different attentional focus conditions including internal focus (IF, i.e., pull back your elbow prior to transfer momentum), external focus, (EF, i.e., imagine cracking a whip to transfer momentum), and control (CON, i.e., no-focus instruction). A Qualisys 3D motion capture-system was used to track reflective markers attached to the arm, forearm, and hand. Consequently, four phases of the volleyball spike including wind-up, cocking, acceleration, and follow-through were analyzed. A one-way repeated-measure ANOVA using one-dimensional statistical parametric mapping (SPM1d) showed that players achieved greater velocities in the hand (
< 0.01), forearm (
< 0.01), and arm (
< 0.01) using the EF instructions from the start of the wind-up phase to the acceleration phase.
(SPM1d-
-tests-paired) analyses indicated significantly greater arm, forearm, and hand velocities during the EF condition, compared to CON (
< 0.01,
< 0.01, and
< 0.01 respectively) and IF (
< 0.01,
< 0.01, and
< 0.01 respectively) conditions. These findings suggest that EF instructions had an immediate impact on increasing volleyball spike velocity from the start of the wind-up phase to the acceleration phase prior to ball contact.
•A more comprehensive information of driving scene is as the input.•An anthropomorphic attention mechanism is developed to calculate the importance.•A graph attention network is adopted to learn ...semantic context features.•Convolutional long short-term memory network achieves the transition of fused features.•A training method based on prior knowledge is designed.
The prediction of the driver’s focus of attention (DFoA) is becoming essential research for the driver distraction detection and intelligent vehicle. Therefore, this work makes an attempt to predict DFoA. However, traffic driving environment is a complex and dynamic changing scene. The existing methods lack full utilization of driving scene information and ignore the importance of different objects or regions of the driving scene. To alleviate this, we propose a multimodal deep neural network based on anthropomorphic attention mechanism and prior knowledge (MDNN-AAM-PK). Specifically, a more comprehensive information of driving scene (RGB images, semantic images, optical flow images and depth images of successive frames) is as the input of MDNN-AAM-PK. An anthropomorphic attention mechanism is developed to calculate the importance of each pixel in the driving scene. A graph attention network is adopted to learn semantic context features. The convolutional long short-term memory network (ConvLSTM) is used to achieve the transition of fused features in successive frames. Furthermore, a training method based on prior knowledge is designed to improve the efficiency of training and the performance of DFoA prediction. These experiments, including experimental comparison with the state-of-the-art methods, the ablation study of the proposed method, the evaluation on different datasets and the visual assessment experiment in vehicle simulation platform, show that the proposed method can accurately predict DFoA and is better than the state-of-the-art methods.
Attentional focus is an area that has garnered considerable attention in the sport psychology and motor performance literature. This is unsurprising given that attentional focus has been directly ...linked to performance outcomes and is susceptible to coaching input. While research has amassed supporting benefits of an external focus of attention (EFA) on motor performance using verbal instruction, other studies have challenged the notion that an EFA is more beneficial than an internal focus of attention (IFA) for sport-related performance. Further, it is unclear what type of instructions may serve to direct an athlete to an EFA and, in particular, if coaching can utilize imagery to orient an athlete toward an EFA. In the present exploratory study, we evaluate the effectiveness of instruction to improve free-throw shooting performance with an emphasis on an EFA brought about by implementing techniques borrowed from the imagery literature. This was tested relative to an alternate approach with an IFA induced through an emphasis on technique, devised to more closely resemble input typical of coach-to-athlete instruction. Twenty-five male and female university basketball players completed both conditions in a fully counterbalanced within-subject design. Results confirmed that participants in the EFA imagery condition had greater shooting accuracy than in the IFA technique condition. The study provides initial evidence that EFA coaching can borrow from imagery techniques, though future research should elucidate the underlying mechanisms of the effect.
Predicting the Driver's Focus of Attention: The DR(eye)VE Project Palazzi, Andrea; Abati, Davide; Calderara, Simone ...
IEEE transactions on pattern analysis and machine intelligence,
2019-July-1, 2019-07-00, 2019-7-1, 20190701, Volume:
41, Issue:
7
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
In this work we aim to predict the driver's focus of attention. The goal is to estimate what a person would pay attention to while driving, and which part of the scene around the vehicle is more ...critical for the task. To this end we propose a new computer vision model based on a multi-branch deep architecture that integrates three sources of information: raw video, motion and scene semantics. We also introduce DR(eye)VE, the largest dataset of driving scenes for which eye-tracking annotations are available. This dataset features more than 500,000 registered frames, matching ego-centric views (from glasses worn by drivers) and car-centric views (from roof-mounted camera), further enriched by other sensors measurements. Results highlight that several attention patterns are shared across drivers and can be reproduced to some extent. The indication of which elements in the scene are likely to capture the driver's attention may benefit several applications in the context of human-vehicle interaction and driver attention analysis.
Reaction time (RT) is one of the most important factors when looking at successful performance in multiple sports. Sports, such as track and field, swimming, tennis, and football, require good RT ...because it determines the overall performance of the athlete. Of the number of factors influencing RT, researchers have paid attention to the focus of attention provided by the instructor in the form of instruction or feedback. Collective study regarding attentional focus have suggested that manipulating focus of attention can have a great impact on motor skill learning and performance. In this current study, the effectiveness of different types of attentional focus on RT of sprint performance was examined. Thirty college students participated in this study. They were divided into two groups instructing with two different attentional focus conditions. The results found that participants in the external focus of attention group improved their RT. Although the sample size of this study is small, this study showed the evidence that the use of external attentional focus would decrease RT even for college students.
Working memory (WM) has limited capacity. This leaves attention with the important role of allowing into storage only the most relevant information. It is increasingly evident that attention is ...equally crucial for prioritizing representations within WM as the importance of individual items changes. Retrospective prioritization has been proposed to result from a focus of internal attention highlighting one of several representations. Here, we suggest an updated model, in which prioritization acts in multiple steps: first orienting towards and selecting a memory, and then reconfiguring its representational state in the service of upcoming task demands. Reconfiguration sets up an optimized perception–action mapping, obviating the need for sustained attention. This view is consistent with recent literature, makes testable predictions, and links WM with task switching and action preparation.
This study investigated associations between quality of the teacher-student relationship (closeness and conflict) and teachers' (N = 48) visual focus of attention in Grade 1 classrooms in fall and ...spring, and it explored to what extent students' (N = 650) gender and task-avoidant behaviour moderated the associations. Results showed first that teacher-student closeness was positively associated with teachers' visual focus of attention in the fall and spring, whereas teacher-student conflict was positively associated with teachers' visual focus of attention only in the spring. In addition, the results of multigroup analysis showed that students' task-avoidant behaviour had a moderating effect on the association between the quality of the teacher-student relationship and teachers' visual focus of attention in the spring, but gender did not.
Previous studies have suggested an association between conscious movement investment and inhibiting motor actions. However, no within-designs were used in which conscious movement investment was ...manipulated. The current study compared changes in inhibition after instruction interventions that aimed to expand and limit conscious investment in the execution of a golf putting task. During a baseline and post-intervention test, participants were asked to putt balls in a hole. Randomly, an auditory stop-signal appeared 50 ms after reaching the end of backswing on some trials, signalling them to stop the downswing as quickly as possible. Between the two tests, the participants practiced under different instructions, without the stop-signal. One group (i.e., expanded conscious investment, ECIG) received multiple explicit movement-related instructions along with the internal focus of attention instructions, while the second group (i.e., limited conscious investment, LCIG) received a single analogy instruction paired with external focus of attention instructions. The results did not reveal significant differences in stopping rate and stopping time between the baseline and post-intervention tests and the two groups. However, a mediation analysis highlighted that the ECIG exhibited a greater change in downswing time compared to the LCIG. This change was correlated with a larger increase in stopping rate and stopping time. We conclude that conscious movement investment did not directly influence inhibition. Instead, we discuss how conscious movement investment may indirectly influence inhibition dependent on the putting kinematics.
•No studies have examined the effects of directly manipulating conscious movement investment on inhibition performance.•Conscious movement investment did not have a direct impact on stopping a golf putting stroke.•More conscious movement investment was associated with an indirect improvement in stopping performance by slowing down the golf putting stroke.
Purpose The aim of this study was to assess the characteristics of instruction and feedback given by physical therapists when giving movement teaching to patients. Participants and Methods Ten ...physical therapists were asked to instruct a simulated patient with left hemiplegia following a stroke in bed, and to record a video of the movement of the therapists and patient. Participants watched the video after completing the task and were asked to comment on their own teaching. From the videos, we measured teaching time, types of instruction and feedback, and the number of times of each type of instruction and feedback. Results The frequency of instruction with an in-ternal-focus was high for all subjects. A significant positive correlation between the frequency of instruction with external-focus and years of experience was found. Conclusion We hypothesize that physical therapists are more likely to use internal-focus when teaching activities of daily living.
Enhancing jumping ability can lead to substantial benefits in sports performance and physical activity. Previous studies indicate that directing an individual’s attention externally before the jump ...is an effective way to improve jumping performance, especially when the standing long jump (SLJ) and vertical jumps (VJs) are performed. To scrutinize reported findings, we systematically reviewed studies that compared the effects of attentional manipulations on jumping performance in adults. Four electronic databases (MEDLINE, Scopus, SPORTSDiscus, and Web of Science) were searched for original research publications. A priori defined inclusion criteria were: (a) participants were healthy adults with a mean age > 18 years, (b) an external (EF) or an internal focus (IF) of attention instruction was used, (c) the study compared an external focus intervention with an internal focus intervention or an external focus with a control (no attentional; CON) intervention or an internal focus intervention with a control intervention, (d) jumping performance was tested, and (e) an immediate effect of focus of attention intervention was evaluated. Of the 380 papers identified, 14 studies were used in 3 part meta-analyses (EF vs
IF, EF vs
CON, and IF vs
CON) that involved 24 comparisons in total. The findings of this analysis revealed that the EF condition displayed superior jumping performance relatively to the IF (p < 0.05) and CON (p < 0.05) conditions. There were no significant (p > 0.05) differences between the IF and CON conditions. These findings suggest that EF instructions should be incorporated into testing procedures when jumping performance is assessed.
PDF
