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Temporal Speed-Accuracy Trade-off

Whether I was an eight year-old at Hoopsters practice or a Junior in high school, one key aspect of basketball that was repeated over and over again was timing.  From waiting for the right time to set a screen to the 3-second violation in the lane, or from timing a jump correctly to grab a rebound to anticipating the speed of a pass from the opposing team in order to steal the ball, events involving time and anticipation happened during every trip down the court.  Another key example of this is from my high school basketball playbook that allowed us a nearly automatic two points every time it was used.  Accurately termed “UP”, the play was meant for our best player, Mason, to get an open alley-oop dunk.  While I can’t jump high enough to dunk, I was an integral part to this play by giving Mason a pass that he could correctly anticipate in order for the play to work.  In this case, Mason needs to use both receptor anticipation through the time the ball takes to get above the rim and effector anticipation to know how long it will take him to jump to the same height to grab the ball.  The play shows the temporal speed-accuracy trade off by Mason having to use these forms of anticipation, as well as the fact that I had to throw the ball at the correct velocity, or faster, in order for him to complete the alley-oop.  If I had thrown the ball to slow, it would be more difficult for him to accurately time his jump, but if the ball is thrown at a faster velocity, Mason had a higher chance to jump sooner or exert more force during the jump in order to dunk the basketball, showing that a reduced movement time of both the ball and of Mason’s jump results in a higher accuracy of the play.

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Attention and Interference

This past summer I was a leader for a performance and lifting program at Waupun High School.  We focused on the typical strength training, speed, and agility that would be most useful to athletes in various sports.  One of the drills that I had them do was one where I would hold a ball in each hand out to my sides, calling out a simple math problem for each person, and at the same time that I finished the problem I would drop the balls.  If the answer to the problem was even, they would grab the ball from my right hand, if it was odd, they grabbed the one from my left.  The goal of the drill was for them to have the ability to react quickly to both answer the problem correctly and catch the ball before it hit the ground.  This drill shows the relationship of interference with attention, as there were many outcomes possible for each kid that attempted the agility drill.  While some individuals were able to both solve the math problem and grab the correct ball before it hit the ground, many were unable to do one of the tasks, and some were unable to do either.  Some athletes could tell me the answer to the problem, but they either grabbed the wrong ball or it hit the ground, showing that the math problem interfered with their ability to grab the correct ball.  Others would grab one of the balls, but they wouldn’t know the answer to the problem, showing that the catching portion of the drill was interfering with the performance on the math component.  A few of the kids also would just freeze up, being both unable to answer the problem while failing to catch either ball that I dropped.  These situations show that neither of the tasks were automatic, and that both the math and the catching part needed some portion of their attention.  For the individuals who were able to successfully answer the math problem and catch the correct ball, at least one of the components of the drill was an automatic process to them, requiring no attention on their part.  As I was giving fairly simple math problems, this could have been an easy and automatic event for some high school kids.  As all of the students in the performance class were athletes, catching the ball also could have been automatic.  The case could also have been where both of these were automatic, and my “difficult” drill was a piece of cake for these individuals.  The video below shows how the drill is performed.

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Bernardostraining.com - Agility and Reaction Training for Athletes

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bernardostraining.com - In this drill the athlete catches the ball depending on the answer to the math problem...

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Temporal Anticipation

My dad races a dragster that can reach about 180 miles per hour, but his winning of the race isn’t dependent upon this maximum speed, it’s based off of his reaction time.  The car has an automatic transmission brake that is set to shut off at a specific time following the release of a button on his steering wheel.  While the car will go about the same speed every race, his reaction time greatly varies each time, determining whether he wins or loses the drag race.  Ever since I was a kid, I’d hear him either come back ecstatic about his reaction time, or extremely upset with himself following a slow reaction time causing a loss, complaining about how he “wasn’t ready for the light to change”.  My dads racing outcomes are a good example of temporal anticipation, as the race starter controls when the three yellow lights turn on after both cars are properly staged (or ready).  The starter is able to choose whatever foreperiod that they want for each race, and it is never the same.  This type of variable foreperiod allows my dad to have a good reaction time if the foreperiod is aged to last a long time, enabling my dad to “be ready” for the light to come on, while if there is a short foreperiod, my dad is more likely to have a slower reaction time and lose the race.  The video below isn’t my dad, but it shows what he does each race with a simulator.  The person has their hand on the button, the fake transmission brake, and releases the button when the yellow lights turn on.  A fast reaction time means that the car will drive right away when the green light turns on, while a slow reaction time will make the driver waste precious time when they could be racing towards the finish line.  The video is also in slow motion to better show what happens during the process.

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What we do in Auto-Tech when their is nothing to do!

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Here's my dad after having incredible reaction times, allowing him to win an event this past summer!

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Who's the "genius" who put running, jumping, AND water together?

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Who's the "genius" who put running, jumping, AND water together?

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Feedforward Control

While I’ve been a runner for most of my life, it wasn’t until getting to college that new events such as javelin, medley relays, or the steeplechase could be done.  Being a distance runner, I figured that steeplechase couldn’t be “that hard”; it’s less than two miles of racing and you get to have some fun in the water.  Before my first race, I didn’t take into account the fact that I’d have to jump over 28 barriers and 7 more water barriers during the seven and a half laps of running.  Nearing the end of the race, both mind and body are fatigued as if you ran a marathon due to all the jumps, and you’re less able to monitor what your body is about to do next when preparing for each jump.  The barriers in the steeplechase are a great example of feedforward control, as you need to ready your legs for the jump by sending information ahead of the movement in order to receive feedback before the hurdle occurs.  Whenever a barrier is getting close, I have to plan out (and freak out a little bit) what spot my foot needs to land in order to launch over the barrier without falling, typically resulting in a shuffled stride to jump off the correct foot.  I also need to swing my arms in the correct pattern to balance out the jumps, especially the water jump, to reduce the risk of falling even more.  If I were to not use feedforward control effectively, I’d end up doing what Evan Jager does in the video below. (The mishap occurs around 44 seconds)

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Men's 3000m Steeplechase at Diamond League Meeting Areva, Paris (FRA) 2015

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Please watch: "Jamaica Wins Men's 4x100m Relay Final at IAAF World Championships Beijing 2015" ➨ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIuf05sek7s -~-~~-~~~-~~-~- Men's 3000m Steeplechase at Diamond League Meeting Areva, Paris (FRA) 2015

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Here's me (in the Wisconsin uniform) doing the infamous water jump at our Club Nationals Meet this past spring.

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Transfer of Learning

Steeplechase is also a great example for how the transfer of learning occurs.  Since it’s impractical for the members of our club team to use steeplechase barriers during practices, we use normal hurdles to simulate what a barrier would be like.  While it is not the same, as steeplechase barriers are much thicker than any hurdle, the hurdles are used as our transfer task, with the aim of having fewer errors while jumping the barriers, improving our times in races, and allowing us to know where and when we need to jump from before we reach the barrier.  Throughout this past track season, as seen in the results below, the members of the Track Club who did steeplechase more than once all improved our times from meet to meet.  This allows me to infer that fewer errors while performing the 35 jumps during the race occurred due to the positive transfer of the hurdle practice to the steeplechase, leading to faster times.  Positive transfer occurred as hurdling matches the identical elements theory through having hurdles and steeplechase barriers have similar observable movement patterns, as well as similar elaborated automatisms.  The practice also matches the transfer appropriate processing theory by having a high similarity between the cognitive processes involved between both skills, where the strategies and concepts to properly jump the hurdle or barrier is the same.  These two theories are shown through the two videos of Emma Coburn below, where the movement patterns, forces used, and strategies needed are very similar between both hurdling or barrier jumping.

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The Wisconsin Track Club results for the Spring 2017 season. Myself, Luke, and Ryan all practiced with hurdles together on a weekly basis, leading to positive transfer, fewer errors, and faster times as the season went on.