Re: Nature, Nurture, and peripheral focus

[Guest guest]

> On many occasions Wayne Gretzky explained his unbelievable success

> in hockey by his ability to be not where a pack is at the moment,

> but to always be where it will be in the next moment. Why don’t we

> have hundreds of Wayne Gretzkys? Many practice deliberately and

> extremely hard, in accordance with the expert performance

> approach.As Wayne Gretzky’s and one of his manager’s quotes

> indicate, he has a unique type of mental representations and, as a

> result, metacognitive abilities. We do not know for sure whether

> deliberate practice alone shaped these abilities or it only

> crystallized them

Telle--- There was a " TOP GUN " fighter aircraft training program on one

of the discovery channels recently. The instructor was saying how

" some just have it and most don't. Some guys can see the whole field

instantly and, get this, have a 6th mind sense that predicts the

future maybe 500 ms. forward??, an eternity at 600 mph. I'm willing to

bet that none of these guys were flying jets at the critical learning

stages. I'm sure that todays video games have an effect on these

characteristics. What is not commonly realized is that all of us can

not only see and attend to, in conscious awareness, straight ahead but

180° peripherally, or slightly more, to both sides at the same time.

One series of fascinating " precognition " experiments had subjects

predicting the future up to 3 seconds, albeit at NAA non aware

awareness levels and at very simple tasks, This facet of intuition is

now termed implicit awareness? The implication. I came away from some

of these articles with the impression that todays the researchers

believed to be below any recognizable awareness. Not so. I have these

somewhere.

Jerry Telle

lakewood CO USA

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 12/10/2008 10:33:38 A.M. Central America Standard,

JRTELLE@... writes:

I'm sure that todays video games have an effect on these

characteristics.

Hi Jerry!

Excellent point! I'm a big NASCAR fan (kind of like track...go first, turn

left). Note the following which seems to corroborate your observation:

In his book Driver #8, Dale Earnhardt Jr. talks about playing video

simulation games to familiarize himself with various tracks. “People in the

media

wanted to know the secret to my success at Watkins Glen,†noted Earnhardt.

“

That’s easy, I tell them. It’s video games. The games help me with simple

stuff, like the way the track goes left and right, but more importantly, where

the shift points and breaking points are. When I get back out on the track, it

’s amazing how similar the real thing is to the game.â€

When I shared this with my students, one of them pointed out that Ichiro did

the same thing to familiarize himself with American pitchers.

Ken Jakalski

Lisle HS

Lisle, IL USA

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 12/11/2008 11:35:49 A.M. Central America Standard,

JRTELLE@... writes:

Are there any devices to train the peripheral aspects of perception?

*********

Hi Jerry!

Excellent question! I believe there is at least one company that believes

vision training is the 'last frontier' in the world of sports performance.

HRA Sportsvision offers a line of products intended to improve things like

binocularity, tracking, focus, depth perception, and peripheral vision.

I haven't tried any of these. Some of the devices would seem to have a

market appeal just because they are so unique, and tap into an area of sports

training that still new to many. One such device--called the Lightning Rod--is

series of lights designed to fire at different speeds to test and train eye

movements and hand speed. I think The Lightning Rod sells for a thousand

dollars.

Ken Jakalski

Lisle HS

Lisle, IL USA

[Guest guest]

> When I get back out on the track, it

> ’s amazing how similar the real thing is to the game.”

> When I shared this with my students, one of them pointed out that

> Ichiro did

> the same thing to familiarize himself with American pitchers.

Hi Ken,

Are there any devices to train the peripheral aspects of perception?

and is there a name for vertical top-bottom aspects-- These horizontal

and vertical peripherals?? are typically outside of " normal " '

awareness -- but easily learned. I'm sure all great foot and

basketballers use this -- again maybe w/out direct awareness. The mind

only processes about a cogillion things at the the same time.

One term I have used is " diffused focus " to describe this 360°

perception. This basically is discontinuing stereoscopic articulation

which brings the rest of the visual field into easier recognition.

Obviously the more intent the stereoscopic focus, as in life

threatening circumstances, the more the visual field collapses/narrows

and the less the other aspects are recognizable -- probably even the "

outside of conscious awareness perceptions " ??.

All of this awareness stuff is beyond fascinating with much really

good research identifying more and more of how much we are aware of

with out consciously attending to it -- even the psychic predicting

the future " precognition " stuff.

Jerry Telle

Lakewood CO USA

[Guest guest]

Dr. Klawans also mentions video games as an example of nurturing

visual-motor skills during critical periods:

" ...give an adult computer pro a Nintendo, match her against an

eight-year-old kid who can barely read the instructions, and see how well the

adult does.

Reading the instructions is scarcely a necessity for kids raised with

computers. The games are visual and the rules are all pretty much the same and

easily learned by visual-motor experience.

So what happens?

The kids wins--every time, day in, day out, year after year. The adult who

first played such games as an adult can never catch up, and each year another

crop of kids can and do beat him. Why? The adult computer pro was too old

when he got started. In our terms [neurologists] there is a critical period

for acquiring this nonverbal visual-motor skill, and if you first start to

learn it after that period you can never really master it. "

At one point in his book Klawans even wonders if we are doing a service to

kids by having them hit baseballs off a T-stand during this critical window of

opportunity.

Ken Jakalski

Lisle HS

Lisle, IL USA

[Guest guest]

The below seems relevant to recent discussions:

Taken from Training in Sport (1996) - Abernethy et al., state:

TRAINING PERCEPTUAL-MOTOR SKILLS FOR SPORT

Methods and implications for training

It is apparent from the preceding section that (a) increased

automation of movement execution and control is indeed an important,

distinguishing characteristic of highly skilled sports performance

and that (, extrapolating from the cognitive skills literature

(especially Spelke et aL, 1976), performance and long-term

improvements in primary skill automatization are possible through

extended periods of dual-task practice. These observations clearly

suggest that there may be considerable value in employing

progressively more demanding dual-task conditions in practice as a

means of providing an ongoing stimulus for the automation of primary

task movement control (Schneider, 1985). As skill development appears

to be an ongoing process even for expert performers (Crossman, 1959;

sson, et aL, 1993) continued attentional overload in practice may

be a valuable rneans of facilitating continuous improvements in the

movement execution and control skills of athletes. Such progressive

overload could be achieved through either the addition of a more

demanding secondary task or, if necessary, the addition of a third

concurrent task. Examples of the applicaion of such training methods

(or empirical examinations of the effectiveless of such methods) are

currently lacking from the motor skills iterature.

SOME CONCLUDING REMARKS

Skilled perceptual-motor performances of elite athletes provide

wonderful examples of the incredible movement capabilities of humans

and of the extent to which intensive training can result in skill

mastery. Underlying the elegant simplicity and apparent ease of

expert sports performance is a level of complexity that sports

scientists are only beginning appreciate. Skilled sports performance

results not simply from muscular art but from a bewildering array of

perceptual, decision-making and movevement execution and control

processes, each refined and coupled to ers as a consequence of task-

specific practice. " "

====================

Carruthers

Wakefield, UK

>

> Dr. Klawans also mentions video games as an example of nurturing

> visual-motor skills during critical periods:

>

> " ...give an adult computer pro a Nintendo, match her against an

> eight-year-old kid who can barely read the instructions, and see

how well the adult does.

> Reading the instructions is scarcely a necessity for kids raised

with

> computers. The games are visual and the rules are all pretty much

the same and

> easily learned by visual-motor experience.

>

> So what happens?

>

> The kids wins--every time, day in, day out, year after year. The

adult who

> first played such games as an adult can never catch up, and each

year another

> crop of kids can and do beat him. Why? The adult computer pro was

too old

> when he got started. In our terms [neurologists] there is a

critical period

> for acquiring this nonverbal visual-motor skill, and if you first

start to

> learn it after that period you can never really master it. "

>

> At one point in his book Klawans even wonders if we are doing a

service to

> kids by having them hit baseballs off a T-stand during this

critical window of

> opportunity.

>

> Ken Jakalski

> Lisle HS

> Lisle, IL USA

>

[Guest guest]

" " The past decade has seen a proliferation of generalised visual

training programmes arising from sports optometry in North America

which claim to be able to improve sports performance through

enhancing visual performance. These commercially available

generalised visual training programmes (such as on and Reilly's

1975 Visiondynamics; Revien and Gabor's 1981 Sports Vision; Revien's

1987 Eyerobics; Seiderman and Schneider's 1983 The Athletic Eye; and

more recently the Sports Vision Manuals of the American Optometrical

Association) are direct adaptations of programmes used previously in

clinical and behavioural optometry in an attempt to enhance the

vision of children, particularly those experiencing reading

difficulties. The programmes involve the use of simple, repetitive

eye exercises (e.g., at tempting to read an eye chart while bouncing

on a trampoline) and in some instances relatively simple training

apparatus (such as the Wayne Saccadic Fixator and the Brock string-a

length of string of some 3-6 m (10-20 ft) upon which are attached a

number of beads which act as fixation points). In all cases the

training stimuli are simple and non-sport-specific and the train

ing approach is based on simple repetition and progression of a type

reminiscent of physical training regimes.

The authors and clinical users of these programmes typically make very

strong claims about the overall effectiveness of generalised visual

training and the relatively limited training time which is needed in

order to reap benefits. For example, Revien (1987) claims Eyerobics,

a video-based home training package '. . . improves physical and

mental performance and reduces visual fatigue'. Similarly Revien and

Gabor's (1981) Sports Vision text includes such claims as:

visual training. . . may well make the difference between winning and

losing, between revelling in keen competition or shrinking from it.

.. . . fixated objects actually appear larger than they are, speeding

objects seen to move more slowly, and things once unseen in the

corner of the eye suddenly appear in sharp focus.

It is obviously tempting, given the claims made by these programmes

and the historical absence of any alternative perceptual training

guidelines from sports science, for coaches and athletes to use such

approaches. However, despite their increasing popularity, the

evidence to support the effectiveness of these programmes is almost

exclusively anecdotal and consequently subject to all kinds of biases

and expectancy effects. There is virtually no empirical evidence to

demonstrate the effectiveness of these generalised visual training

programmes nor, on the grounds of the evidence reviewed in the

previous section, any principled a priori grounds to expect such non-

specific training to indeed be useful. A number of recent reviews of

the sports vision literature both by optometrists (e.g., Stine et aL,

1982; Reichow and Stern, 1986) and sport scientists (e.g., Abernethy,

1986; Landers, 1988; Leibowitz, Yinger and Landers, 1989) have

highlighted this dearth of controlled studies on the effectiveness of

generalised visual training programmes for sport.

If generalised visual training is to be effective three basic

assumptions must be fulfilled, namely:

(1) Generalised visual skills must playa major role in superior sports

performance.

(2) Such genera Ii sed visual skills must be able to be trained.

(3) Improved generalised visual skills must translate directly to

improved sports performance (Stine et aL, 1982).

A significant body of knowledge exists with respect to the first

assumption, but this evidence (as revealed in the earlier section)

argues against a major role for generalised visual skills in expert

performance. The evidence indicates that generalised visual skills do

not constitute an important factor discriminating the performance of

the expert from the novice. With respect to the second assumption, a

substantial body of evidence exists within the clinical optometry

literature to suggest that most commonly measured visual functions

such as foveal acuity (Wittenberg, Brock and Folsom, 1969; McKee and

Westheimer, 1978; Fendick and Westheimer, 1983), peripheral acuity

(Low, 1946; Saugstad and Lie, 1964; Fendick and Westheimer, 1983),

peripheral motion thresholds ( and Leibowitz, 1974) and visual

field expanses (Sailor, 1973; Wood, Wild, Hussey and Crews, 1987) can

indeed be improved with practice. " "

=========================

Carruthers

Wakefield, UK