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Mental detachment, which includes both cognitive and emotional detachment, refers to an athlete’s sense of being away from the cognitive and emotional demands of sport and is considered an important recovery experience for athletes. However, mental detachment appears to be impaired by high levels of physical fatigue following training or competition, suggesting that self-regulating post-performance cognitions and emotions may depend on available energetic resources. The purpose of this daily diary study was therefore to investigate whether daily sport-related rumination and worry can explain the relation between daily post-training physical fatigue and vigor on the one hand, and subsequent cognitive and emotional detachment on the other hand. Thirty-nine Dutch elite athletes completed a daily survey after training (T1) and at bedtime (T2) across 3–9 days. Multilevel structural equation modeling showed that daily physical fatigue was positively associated with sport-related rumination and worry during recovery, whereas daily vigor was negatively associated with sport-related worry during recovery. In turn, worry, but not rumination, was negatively associated with both cognitive detachment and emotional detachment. Results also revealed a significant indirect effect of worry between physical fatigue and cognitive detachment. These findings are in line with the view that recovery is a self-regulation process that may be dependent on available energetic resources. Moreover, this study underscores the practical importance of regulating postperformance physical fatigue, vigor, and sport-related worry to optimize the recovery process.

The study of the sociology of scientific knowledge distinguishes between contributory and interactional experts. Contributory experts have practical expertise—they can “walk the walk.” Interactional experts have internalized the tacit components of expertise—they can “talk the talk” but are not able to reliably “walk the walk.” Interactional expertise permits effective communication between contributory experts and others (e.g., laypeople), which in turn facilitates working jointly toward shared goals. Interactional expertise is attained through long-term immersion into the expert community in question. To assess interactional expertise, researchers developed the imitation game—a variant of the Turing test—to test whether a person, or a particular group, possesses interactional expertise of another. The imitation game, which has been used mainly in sociology to study the social nature of knowledge, may also be a useful tool for researchers who focus on cognitive aspects of expertise. In this paper, we introduce a modified version of the imitation game and apply it to examine interactional expertise in the context of blindness. Specifically, we examined blind and sighted individuals’ ability to imitate each other in a street-crossing scenario. In Phase I, blind and sighted individuals provided verbal reports of their thought processes associated with crossing a street—once while imitating the other group (i.e., as a pretender) and once responding genuinely (i.e., as a non-pretender). In Phase II, transcriptions of the reports were judged as either genuine or imitated responses by a different set of blind and sighted participants, who also provided the reasoning for their decisions. The judges comprised blind individuals, sighted orientation-and-mobility specialists, and sighted individuals with infrequent socialization with blind individuals. Decision data were analyzed using probit mixed models for signal-detection-theory indices. Reasoning data were analyzed using natural-language-processing (NLP) techniques. The results revealed evidence that interactional expertise (i.e., relevant tacit knowledge) can be acquired by immersion in the group that possesses and produces the expert knowledge. The modified imitation game can be a useful research tool for measuring interactional expertise within a community of practice and evaluating practitioners’ understanding of true experts.

This paper describes the nature and utility of the think aloud method for studying thinking that qualitative researchers from any disciplinary background can consider as an option for understanding thought. The paper begins with an overview of the theoretical framework underpinning the think aloud method, and how this framework is proposed to address shortcomings of traditional interview-based methods of understanding participants’ thinking. It continues with a description of a study using the think aloud method of golfers’ thoughts during putting with the aim of demonstrating how the method can be applied, and as an opportunity to present examples of thoughts and explore how these thoughts function in the control of putting tasks. The paper finishes with proposals for how qualitative researchers might integrate the think aloud method into their own research on sport, exercise and health, and a discussion of common pitfalls and concerns with applying the method.

Objectives To examine the use of relaxation skills by differentially skilled athletes in relation to the deliberate practice framework. Design Differentially skilled athletes completed a survey about their use of relaxation skills. Method 150 athletes representing three skill levels (recreational, college, and professional) completed the deliberate relaxation for sport survey, which assessed relaxation on three deliberate practice dimensions (relevancy, concentration, and enjoyment); time spent in different relaxation skills in a recent typical week; and functions of relaxation. Results Athletes perceived relaxation as relevant to performance, requiring concentration, and enjoyable, and the relationships between these dimensions were positive. Professional and college athletes perceived relaxation as more relevant to effective competition than recreational athletes. Professional athletes engaged in more relaxation in a typical week than college and recreational athletes. In a typical week, autogenic, eastern, and muscle relaxation types were used least, deep breathing, meditation, and imagery relaxation types moderately, and stretching most. Athletes reported the primary functions of relaxation were to cope with competitive anxiety and promote recovery but relaxation was also reported to be used to cope with “everyday” anxieties associated with being an athlete. More physical (e.g., muscle relaxation) than mental relaxation types were used in relation to coping with competitive anxiety, whereas more mental (e.g., meditation) than physical relaxation types were used in relation to coping with everyday anxiety. Conclusions The study provides support for the sport-specific framework of deliberate practice in relation to use of relaxation skills and informs the current understanding of self-regulation by athletes.

Research on decision-making under stress has mainly involved laboratory-based studies with few contextual descriptions of decision-making under stress in the natural ecology. We examined how police officers prepared for, coped with and made decisions under threat-of-death stress during real events. A delayed retrospective report method was used to elicit skilled police officers' thoughts and feelings during attempts to resolve such events. Reports were analysed to identify experiences of stress and coping, and thought processes underpinning decision-making during the event. Officers experienced a wide range of events, coped with stress predominantly via problem-focused strategies, and adapted their decision-making under stress based on the available context. Future officer training should involve a greater variety of training scenarios than is involved in current training, and expose trainees to the possible variants of each situation to foster better situational representation and, thus, a more reliable and adaptive mental model for use in decision-making. Practitioner Summary: This study concerns decision-making and coping strategies used by skilled police officers during real threat-of-death situations. Officers' decision-making strategies differed according to the complexity of the situation and they coped with the stress of these situations via attempts to resolve the situations (e.g. by planning responses) and, to a lesser extent, via attempts to deal with their emotions.

A better understanding of the factors influencing medical team performance and accounting for expert medical team performance should benefit medical practice. Therefore, the aim here is to highlight key issues with using deliberate practice to improve medical team performance, especially given the success of deliberate practice for developing individual expert performance in medicine and other domains. Highlighting these issues will inform the development of training for medical teams. The authors first describe team coordination and its critical role in medical teams. Presented next are the cognitive mechanisms that allow expert performers to accurately interpret the current situation via the creation of an accurate mental "model" of the current situation, known as a situation model. Following this, the authors propose that effective team performance depends at least in part on team members having similar models of the situation, known as a shared situation model. The authors then propose guiding principles for implementing team deliberate practice in medicine and describe how team deliberate practice can be used in an attempt to reduce barriers inherent in medical teams to the development of shared situation models. The paper concludes with considerations of limitations, and future research directions, concerning the implementation of team deliberate practice within medicine.

We manipulated contextual information in order to examine the perceptual–cognitive processes that support anticipation using a simulated cricket-batting task. Skilled (N= 10) and less skilled (N= 10) cricket batters responded to video simulations of opponents bowling a cricket ball under high and low contextual information conditions. Skilled batters were more accurate, demonstrated more effective search behaviours, and provided more detailed verbal reports of thinking. Moreover, when they viewed their opponent multiple times (high context), they reduced their mean fixation time. All batters improved performance and altered thought processes when in the high context, compared to when they responded to their opponent without previously seeing them bowl (low context). Findings illustrate how context influences performance and the search for relevant information when engaging in a dynamic, time-constrained task.

We review contemporary research on perceptual-cognitive expertise in sport and consider implications for those working in the field of applied cognitive psychology. We identify the important perceptual-cognitive skills that facilitate anticipation in sport and illustrate how these skills interact in a dynamic manner during performance. We also highlight our current understanding of how these skills are acquired and consider the extent to which the underlying processes are specific to a particular domain and role within that domain. Next, we briefly review recent attempts to facilitate the acquisition of perceptual-cognitive expertise using simulation training coupled with instruction and feedback on task performance. Finally, we discuss how research on elite athletes can help inform applied cognitive psychologists who are interested in capturing and enhancing perceptual-cognitive expertise across various domains.

The purpose of this study was to measure directly the knowledge and performance of novice and experienced critical care nurses in a simulated task environment.Nurses were required to control the physiologic deterioration of patients with respiratory compromise in 4 scenarios and were also tested on their knowledge of the constructs present in the scenarios.The results indicate that experienced nurses possessed highly superior knowledge when compared with novice nurses (P.001). The results further demonstrated a lack of reliable differences in actual clinical performance when nurses were considered solely on the basis of their term of experience. Group differences in performance were demonstrated only when nurses who had achieved board certification in critical care nursing were compared with the remaining participants.The results demonstrate the lack of linkage between knowledge and clinical performance, which calls into question the supposition by many in nursing that knowledge and performance are inextricably linked.

Verbal and nonverbal communication is a critical mediator of performance in team sports and yet there is little extant research in sports that involves direct measures of communication. Our study explored communication within NCAA Division I female tennis doubles teams. Video and audio recordings of players during doubles tennis matches captured the communications that took place between and during points. These recordings were coded and sequential analysis computed using the Discussion Analysis Tool software (Jeong, 2003). Results indicated that most communications were emotional (i.e., > 50%) or action statements (i.e., > 25%). Winning teams exhibited significantly different communication sequences than losing teams. In particular, winning teams had a more homogeneous model of communication, which perhaps makes message interpretation more reliable. Finally, winning teams exchanged twice as many messages as losing teams.

Objective The objective of the study was to identify and describe the extent, function, nature, and timeline of practice and preparation activities undertaken by experts in order to adapt to constraints unique to a specific upcoming competition. Method A content analysis was conducted of data from interviews with 15 expert orienteers and six experienced orienteering coaches about competition-specific preparation in the sport of orienteering. Results The analysis revealed several key concepts. First, competition-specific preparation is necessary because the constraints of a given orienteering competition vary across competitions. Second, owing to such variance, orienteers have limited advance information about the specific constraints of an upcoming competition, which impedes their preparation for that competition. Third, expert orienteers engage in a range of activities designed to gather information about the constraints of an upcoming competition. Fourth, this information is then used to identify or create practice environments that represent these constraints. Practice within these environments enables expert orienteers to adapt to these constraints before competing. Conclusions Competition-specific preparation appears critical to performance in sports in which environmental constraints change considerably between competitions.

In military and sports tasks, individuals are often required to perform in a complex and dynamic environment and obtain a tactical advantage over an opponent even when only partial or incomplete information is available. Successful performance in both domains is typically dependent upon the ability to work both independently and as a team in an effective manner by combining perceptual, cognitive, motor, and social skills, often under stressful circumstances. Despite these similarities, and the extensive literature bases amassed on training in each field, there has been little, if any, cross-fertilization or collaboration. We offer a synopsis of perceptual-cognitive and decision skills training research from the fields of sport psychology, expert performance, human factors, and military psychology with a view toward highlighting commonalities and differences in approach to training. Attention is drawn to the experimental designs and interventions employed, as well as methodological shortcomings and how these have been addressed. In addition, we highlight the differences in how training recommendations have been derived, discuss questions that have been raised in developing and validating training programs, and, in particular, emphasize the need for evidence-based practice. Our aim is to offer conclusions from the sport psychology literature that can inform the design, structure, content, and implementation of future military decision training.

This paper describes how sociotechnological systems comprising human and technological agents can be considered problem solving systems. Problem solving systems typically comprise many agents, each characterized by at least partial autonomy. A challenge for problem solving systems is to coordinate system agent operations during problem solving. This paper explores how competence models of human-human and animal-animal coordination might be used to inform the design of problem solving systems so that the potential for agent coordination is enhanced. System design principles are identified based on a review of competent coordination in human groups, such as work and sport teams, and animal groups, such wolf packs and bee colonies. These principles are then discussed in relation to agent coordination in the domains of E-Science, future combat systems, and medicine, which typify real-world environments comprising problem solving systems.

This article offers a critical evaluation of the team cognition and performance literature and, in particular, the concepts, ideas, and research discussed by the authors contributing to this special issue. We begin by examining how some of the terms introduced have been defined previously and assess the appropriateness of and theoretical rationale for their use. Next, the concept of “sharedness” is considered. We specifically focus on the role of planning or plan sharing in becoming an “expert team.” Following this, we discuss the relationship between those concepts introduced and performance. We pay particular attention to the underlying mechanisms responsible for superior performance, at both the individual and team level, with a special consideration given to understanding if and why this relationship is important. Finally, we consider the added value of adopting this approach and how the research on teams might be used in improving the approaches, methods, and paradigms currently adopted in s...

The purpose of this study was to compare moment-to-moment appraisals and coping strategies of 4 non-elite and 2 elite male trap shooters during competitions and in particular during periods of competition perceived as critical to performance. Appraisals and coping patterns of trap shooters were captured via verbal reports of thinking provided between sets of shots during major competitions. Verbal reports were coded according to an appraisal and coping typology. Coded data as well as shooting performance data were subjected to a sequential analysis of probabilities of pairs of events. Fewer reports of negative appraisals (NEGAs) and more frequent reports of problem-focused coping (PFC) were observed among both elite athletes compared to non-elite athletes. After making a NEGA, non-elite shooters often progressed to the next target without attempting to cope, whereas elite shooters used both PFC and emotion-focused coping (EFC) before proceeding to the next target. After missing a target, the non-elite athletes used more EFC than expected. These results indicate that elite athletes are more likely to cope with NEGAs than non-elite athletes using a wider variety of coping strategies. Athletes might benefit from increased awareness of the potentially detrimental impact of NEGAs on performance and by integrating coping strategies within preparatory routines.

Developments in technology and software engineering are making many types of traditional jobs, such as bookkeeping, accounting, routine design, and document indexing, virtually obsolete (Rasmussen, 2000). The rapid improvements in technology and automated work methods challenge even the traditional idea of stable job competence, as well as the ability to predict the length and the nature of current or future professional careers. Today's work conditions require ongoing adaptations by employees and entrepreneurs to new demands and competitive opportunities through continuing education and training. Technological innovations, such as the World Wide Web, broadband communication, and highly portable communication and work devices, have reduced the constraints of geography on work. Today, many services can be provided with an equivalent level of quality irrespective of whether the provider is in the office next door or on a different continent. It is, indeed, becoming an age of global consumerism in which one can “work with anyone, anytime, anywhere.” Additionally, many specialized skills previously performed by human beings are now the purview of automated systems, and can often be conducted anywhere in the world at a fraction of the cost if carried out in Western Europe and North America. This technological revolution suggests that the competitive advantage of any country aspiring to economic prosperity is increasingly dependent on the capability of both its research and development groups and its skilled workforce, not only to create and develop new and improved products that are at the cutting edge, but also to quickly react and adapt to market forces.