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In the sixth grade I decided to try out for the middle school softball team. I was not very good at first, so they threw me out in the outfield. I had decided I really wanted to play infield or pitch, so I practiced a lot with my dad on throwing or catching within the infield. At first I found it difficult anticipating time-to-contact of the ball, and I would often duck out of the way. Previously I had played soccer and basketball, so I was not used to a ball that size. Eventually, I got well acquainted to the ball and got better at determining when and how to make the movement. This was most likely due to the inverse rate of expansion of the ball on my retina, which is also known as tau. One game I finally got to pitch, and the player hit a ball that I could see coming right toward my face, however, I was able to judge the speed and time of contact and ended up catching the ball with my bare hand. By understanding the properties and size of the softball, I was able to set a threshold at which to initiate the interceptive action, which ultimately prevented me from getting hit in the face.

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For several years I was a goalkeeper for my soccer team. One of the worst feeling was when a player on a fast break would fake a shot which caused you to react, but then quickly change directions to get around you. In this case, the processing system of a goalkeeper would be undergoing its psychological refractory period. In other words, I would still be reacting to stimulus one, the fake, when stimulus two, the move, occurred. My response time for the second stimulus would be significantly slowed, due to the fact I would still be reacting to the first stimulus. One time I vividly remember this happening was in a playoff game at a huge tournament. The game was tied and it was in the last five minutes of the half. The opposing teams strongest forward broke through my defense at the half and was on a break away. I charged from the net and she made a sharp movement to the right, which I reacted to by shifting my weight. She quickly crossed over while I was still shifting my weight, now in the wrong direction. She had beat me, as I was unable to react due to the refractory period in my processing. Luckily, she shot the ball right after she beat me and managed to miss the goal entirely. We went on to win the game and the tournament.

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I once competed in a fear-factor live competition at Universal Studios in Orlando. In one of our tasks we had to accurately throw as many dead squids (which were in an apron that we wore) into a bucket while we swung 30 feet in the air. My initial strategy was to throw squids as fast as I could toward the bucket, however, I quickly realized how inaccurate and ineffective this strategy was. I then decided to slow down how quickly I was throwing them, which significantly increased my accuracy. This is a good example of Fitt’s law, which states that with increased speed, accuracy decreases. By decreasing the rate I threw squids, I was far better at aiming and making them into the bucket. I ended up making it to the last round and lost by 0.1 seconds.

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Like a dolphin- uh let me just show you!

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Like a dolphin- uh let me just show you!

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For my very first job I was hired at a private country club to be a lifeguard. Once I got there, I soon realized that I would not only be a lifeguard, but I would also be a swim instructor. At this pool we got absolutely no training on how to teach strokes or swim lessons in general.  I had learned all the strokes in elementary school, but I had not practiced them much since.  At first I was assigned only young children, which I had no problem teaching. However, one month in I was assigned an 11 year-old whose parents had both been division-one collegiate swimmers (why they didn’t teach her themselves, I will never know). The parents sat on the side of the pool and asked me to teach their child the butterfly stroke. At this point I was internally screaming, and trying to find the words to explain to the child how to start the stroke. I had learned the strokes by practicing, so the swimming motions were stored in my procedural memory. As I tried to explain with words I was digging around in my declarative memory, so I was unable to explain verbally how to do the stroke since that information was not stored there. Eventually, I ended up demonstrating the movements and attempted to teach the stroke that way, which seemed to work much better. By the end of the lesson she was able to learn through my movements, and the parents were very pleased. That was easily one of the most stressful 30 minutes of my life.

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My first two years of high school basketball, I was one of the worst and most inconsistent shooters on the team. I was so bad that my coach told me to stop shooting and to always pass the ball. She would even sub me in and out every possession change, just so I would only be out there in defensive situations. After practice, she would make me stay and shoot 50 layups, 40 free-throws, and 30 three-pointers. By the end of each block I was consistently making shots. However, the next day at practice all that work would seem to disappear and I couldn’t make anything. The summer before junior year we decided to get a private coach to help with my shot. I expected to go to the gym and shoot a million of the same shots until I got it right. However, this coaches’ strategy was very different. He had me stand at the free throw line and he set up different spots of the floor. As I stood in “triple threat” positioning, he would call out a random number on the floor. I would have to react to his call and shoot the ball from that spot on the floor. When I started playing summer-league in august, my offensive play had completely changed. For the first time, I was making shots consistently all over the floor. I think this is a good example of elaboration hypothesis for the contextual interference effect. Each time that coach had called out a spot on the floor, I had to use a certain strategy to make the shot. I compared how each spot of the floor changed the way I shot, and worked to remember how my body and arm felt when I made that shot. These motions became more memorable, and eventually transferred into real game and practice situations.