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Introduction: The objective of this study is to investigate the extent to which sighted persons understand thought processes of persons who are visually impaired (i.e., those who are blind or have low vision). The investigation focused on a street-crossing task. Method: Participants were 15 visually impaired persons and 21 sighted persons. The sighted group included 6 orientation and mobility (O&M) specialists and 15 individuals who represent the sighted public and have infrequent interactions with people with visual impairments. Participants provided verbal reports of their thought processes associated with a street-crossing scenario twice, once as a “non-pretender” and once as a “pretender.” In the non-pretender role, participants verbalized their thinking in line with their actual state of sightedness. In the pretender role, participants with visual impairments pretended that they did not have any visual impairments, whereas sighted participants pretended that they were blind. Transcribed data were analyzed using thematic analysis, resulting in three themes with 14 subthemes. The genuine responses of visually impaired participants and the imitated responses of the sighted participants were compared using proportions of the subthemes. Results: Fisher’s exact z tests demonstrated that out of the 14 subthemes, the visually impaired participants’ proportions were (a) similar to those of sighted O&M specialists in 10 subthemes and (b) different from those of the other sighted participants in seven subthemes. Participants verbalized fewer thoughts when describing sighted navigation than when describing navigation as a person with visual impairment. Discussion: Sighted persons with infrequent social interaction with people who are visually impaired seem to be less successful at “pretending to be blind,” indicating that they may have difficulties in adopting the perspective of people with visual impairments. Implications for Practitioners: Sighted O&M specialists develop an understanding of the cognitive processes of people who are visually impaired through training and contact. Other professionals that support these individuals (e.g., technology designers) could benefit from developing such an understanding and immersing themselves in the social life of people with visual impairments.

We studied the transition of an applied sport psychology training program at a public U.S. university from a face-to-face mode to a virtual mode in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We aimed to identify challenges of this transition for supervisors and student consultants and best practices for virtual consultancy. This autoethnographic case study involved interviews with three program supervisors, ten student consultants, and one college coach. We also examined researcher observations and lived experiences during the transition. A blended ethnographic and codebook thematic analysis was undertaken. We identified two superordinate challenges: (a) program challenges and (b) consulting challenges. We also identified three superordinate best practices: (a) supervisor best practices, (b) student consultant best practices, and (c) best practices in sport psychology delivery. These findings can usefully inform efforts by individual consultants and applied programs at universities to adopt virtual modes of consultancy.

This article provides a review of literature on the psychology of rest in athletes with the aim of advancing research and practice in this area. While the concept of rest represents an important component of several key topics in sport psychology, researchers and practitioners have paid relatively little attention to this concept and to psychological aspects of rest in particular. We review literature in three sport psychology topic areas within which the concept of rest in athletes has received theoretical or empirical attention, which are recovery, skill learning, and expertise development. For each area, we describe how rest has received little direct research attention within this literature, identify how this shortcoming limits current theory, research, and practice, and propose directions for future research and practice. We then describe a recent study that has attempted to address the paucity of research on this topic by prioritizing an understanding of the psychology of rest in athletes. We also explore reasons why rest has received little attention in sport psychology with the rationale that an increased awareness of these reasons will help advance research and practice in our field. We conclude by considering implications of our review for best practice. Lay summary: Rest is critical to athlete performance and well-being, yet researchers and practitioners have paid little attention to psychological aspects of rest. We review the sport psychology literature to identify directions for research aimed at advancing our understanding of rest and practical guidelines to help athletes obtain the rest they require. Implications for Practice Practitioners should consider that recovery following training and competitions does not just involve recovering physically; it involves recovering psychologically Recovering psychologically depends in part on engagement in high-quality sleep and wakeful resting High-quality wakeful resting involves obtaining specific resting experiences such as not thinking about or “psychologically detaching from” one’s sport.

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.

Mental rest appears critical to sustained high performance in sports and other human performance contexts. We draw on the developing science of mental rest to provide a useful guide for practitioners about how athletes and other performers can obtain the mental rest they need. We describe why mental rest is important for recovery and skill learning in athletes and how athletes obtain mental rest by engaging in sleep and resting while awake, known as wakeful resting. We also provide strategies that enable athletes to obtain more sleep and wakeful resting, and present tools for monitoring athletes’ mental rest.

Deliberate practice is a popular concept in sport and performance domains. Performers and practitioners in these domains are eager to understand and use deliberate practice to improve their perform...

Objective: Nurses engaged in practice make split-second decisions based on stimuli perceived in the clinical environment. There has been limited research in nursing on stimuli perception and limited research aimed specifically at directly measuring nurses’ gaze and the subsequent quality of their decisions.Methods: This study used an observational descriptive design to examine nurses’ gaze behaviors as they cared for a simulated patient in three different clinical scenarios. Participants were fitted with eye-tracking goggles that facilitated the recording on video of the focal point of their gaze. The recorded videos were coded to quantify the participants’ areas of focus. For each scenario, visual focus data were compared between participants who successfully resolved the scenarios and those who did not. Results: The results revealed statistically significant differences in areas of focus between successful and unsuccessful participants. While successful participants focused on the patient, unsuccessful participants focused on task-irrelevant environmental cues.Conclusions: The results demonstrate a need for nurse educators to focus their students on the patient, while guiding them to avoid becoming mired in task irrelevant foci and actions.

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.

Understanding high-level performance requires effective methods of studying expertise and expert performers. Representative tasks that capture the key components of expertise can be identified, allowing expert performance to be studied under controlled conditions. Well-designed representative tasks can allow researchers to elucidate the underlying mechanisms for superior performance, stratify performers based on skill, and uncover the developmental steps taken by those performers to reach their current levels of performance. In the present chapter, the authors first provide a general overview of the concepts of representative tasks and simulated task environments. The authors then describe in more detail how representative tasks and simulated task environments can be used to achieve the twin goals of understanding expert performance and developing training on the basis of expert performers. The authors then present examples of recent research involving representative tasks. The chapter concludes with the authors presenting future directions for the use of representative tasks in research and practice.

Objectives\ud Whereas accounts of skilled performance based on automaticity (Beilock & Carr, 2001; Fitts & Posner, 1967) emphasize reduced cognitive involvement in advanced skill, other accounts propose that skilled performance relies on increased cognitive control (Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995). The objective of this study was to test predictions differentiating the automaticity and cognitive control accounts by assessing thinking during golf putting.\ud \ud Design\ud The cognitive processes of less-skilled and more-skilled golfers were examined during putting using concurrent, think-aloud verbal reports. The design included putting conditions that differed in complexity and thus the need to adapt the putt to the particular conditions.\ud \ud Method\ud Putting complexity was manipulated via changes to putt length and perceived stress during putting. Putts were executed from two starting locations (i.e., the same starting location as the previous putt or a new starting location).\ud \ud Results\ud The analysis showed that, during putting: more thoughts were verbalized overall by more-skilled golfers than less-skilled golfers; both groups verbalized more thoughts overall during higher-complexity putts (i.e., longer distance putts, and putts under higher stress when executed from a new starting location) than lower-complexity putts; and the two groups did not differ significantly in the number of thoughts related to motor mechanics.\ud \ud Conclusions\ud The results of this study provide support for a cognitive control account of skilled performance and suggest that the path to skilled performance involves the acquisition of more refined higher-level cognitive representations mediating planning and analysis.\ud \ud Keywords\ud Cognitive control; Concurrent verbalizations; Conscious control; Expert performance; Think-aloud; Verbal reports

Shared awareness was studied in one novice and one expert basketball team during real games. Teams were considered dynamic social networks with team members as nodes and members’ awareness of other members during ongoing performance as relations. Networks, and changes to them across games, were analysed at different levels of organization using social network analysis to identify patterns of awareness within the teams. The results showed that one team member in each team often heeded, or was heeded by, his teammates, indicating his leadership role in coordinating the team. Also, expert team members had a low level of awareness of their teammates, which may be explained by implicit coordination processes. Finally, there was less variability in intra-team relations in the expert (vs. novice) team, which may be explained by the enhanced ability of the expert team to achieve and maintain an optimal level of awareness during the game. At a practical level, teams might be alerted during performance when their n...

Backgrounds With the increasing use of simulation in nursing education and a growing acceptance of simulation as a component of student's clinical experiences, there is a need to provide evidence of a relationship between knowledge, performance in simulated task environments, and actual clinical performance. Methods This study used a pre/post test design to examine the relationship between standardized test scores and performance in real-time and simulated critical care settings. Performance in a simulated task environment and scores on standardized tests were examined before and after a 4-week critical care experience in a group of senior nursing students. Results Findings from the study demonstrate statistically significant relationships among the three variables. Conclusions Findings from the study provide evidence for the effectiveness of simulated scenarios as a means to assess clinical performance and to differentiate between high- and low-performing students.

While current research on the factors affecting the HIV epidemic within the general population has considered the role of HIV case managers, much remains to be known about case management effectiveness and how it might be enhanced. This article presents the data from a statewide survey of case management professionals in Florida. The study focused on case managers' preparation for practice and barriers to successful practice. The study results reflect a very broad educational preparation in multiple disciplines with highly varied means of case manager training and orientation at entry to practice. Further, the results highlighted the existence of multiple barriers that challenge the ability of case managers to cope with the demands of case management practice in sites serving people living with HIV/AIDS who are socially and economically challenged. The article concludes with recommendations for changes in the system that would enhance the preparation of case management professionals for entry to practice.

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.

The purpose of this study was to investigate contextual interference effects on skill acquisition and strength gains during the learning of the bench press movement. Twenty-four healthy, college-aged males and females were stratified to control, high contextual interference (HCI), and low contextual interference (LCI) groups. Treatment groups were provided with written and visual instruction on proper bench press form and practiced the bench press and dart throwing for four weeks. Within each session, LCI performed all bench press sets before undertaking dart-throws. HCI undertook dart-throws immediately following each set of bench press. Control only did testing. Measurements, including one repetition maximum (1RM), checklist scores based on video recordings of participants' 1RM's, and dart-throw test scores were taken at pre-test, 1 week, 2 week, post-test, and retention test. Results were consistent with the basic premise of the contextual interference effect. LCI had significant improvements in percent 1RM and checklist scores during training, but were mostly absent after training (post-test and retention test). HCI had significant improvements in percent 1RM and checklist scores both during and after training. Thus, HCI may augment strength and movement skill on the bench press since proper technique is an important component of resistance exercise movements.

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.

This study investigated novices' “lived experiences” of navigation within the sport of orienteering from an enactive and phenomenological approach. The objective was to qualitatively characterize elements of task-related situations that were meaningful for orienteers. The results showed that the participants continuously made judgments about the reliability of their estimations about whether they were on “the right route” on the course. When the participants judged that they were only approximately on the right route or were unable to locate themselves, elements of the situation other than map and terrain features became meaningful for them. These results demonstrate that, for novice orienteers, navigation activity must extend beyond navigation as a logical, computational way-finding problem to include embodied, social, cultural and situated dimensions.

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.

Background Falls represent a significant threat to patient safety for hospitalized patients throughout the world. Little is known, however, regarding nurses' immediate responses to the discovery of a fallen patient. Objectives The objective of this study was to perform an experimental examination of experienced and novice nurses' reaction to the discovery of a fallen patient who has sustained a closed head injury. Design The study was based upon the expert performance approach, which utilizes a mixed methods approach to determining performance characteristics of individuals performing in a variety of domains. Setting The study was accomplished using a simulated task environment developed specifically for research concerning the performance of health professionals. Participants The study included 12 experienced and 10 novice nurses, all of whom were currently employed in critical care settings. Methods The study used directly observed performance, which was quantified through the use of direct coding of clinical behaviors and the analysis of verbal reports of thought. Results The data indicate that experienced participants were not only more likely to call for help but that they were more likely to precede this action by checking for responsiveness, and then, after calling for help, establish the effectiveness of the patient's airway, breathing and circulation. These data confirmed that experienced participants were more likely to engage in the appropriate sequence of actions when faced with this unexpected and highly stressful situation. Conclusions Novice nurses' superficial assessment of the situation and subsequent failure to react properly implied an overall pattern of superior performance by the experienced nurses. The results indicated that, compared with novice nurses, experienced nurses are more likely to initiate standard treatment protocols in situations such as the one reported in this study.

When a quarterback and a receiver stand facing one another after an incompletion with their arms and eyebrows raised, it is clear that a key challenge for sports teams is achieving team coordination; that is, arranging team members’ actions so that, when they are combined, they are in suitable relation for effective team functioning. A prerequisite to achieving team coordination is effective communication between team members, including coaches, about game plans and the roles and responsibilities of team members. This article presents strategies for enhancing team coordination and communication during practice and competition.

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to present the results of a study focusing on the basis for parental decisions to refrain from the standard pediatric immunization schedule. Design and Methods: The study was based upon open-ended qualitative items that were subjected to content analysis to identify the prominent themes cited by parents. Results: The results of the study demonstrate the presence of a variety of continuing misperceptions regarding the risks represented by common pediatric immunizations. Practice Implications: The study demonstrates the need for intensive efforts designed to apprise families of the risks and benefits associated with pediatric immunization.

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.

This study describes appraisal and coping patterns of Portuguese trapshooters during competition, via post-performance retrospective verbal reports. Probabilities that an event (e.g., missed target) is followed by another event (e.g., negative appraisal) were calculated and state transitional diagrams were drawn. Event-sequences during critical and non-critical performance periods were compared. Negative appraisals were most likely before and after missed targets and hits with the second shot. Positive appraisals were most likely before problem-focused coping and after emotion-focused coping. These findings support the process view of coping by illustrating that athletes cope with a variety of situations via a complex set of appraisals.

Understanding how the actions of members of sports teams are organised and coordinated is a key challenge for sport psychology and, until recently, extant theory within sport psychology has allowed few insights into this topic. This article considers how the labour in sports teams is organised, why the organisational structure of sports teams introduces an acute need for team coordination, and why coordination in teams is difficult to achieve. It also considers the team-level social-cognitive states and processes required to achieve coordination. Implications of the conceptual framework outlined here are presented for current theory and future research on team functioning within sport psychology as well as for applied practitioners working with sports teams.

The recognition-primed decision (RPD) model and Take the First (TTF) heuristic assert that successful and experienced decision makers typically generate relatively few options, and generate a satisficing, or the best, option first. Moreover, the TTF heuristic suggests that as more options are generated the likelihood that the best option will be selected is reduced. An alternative proposal suggests that the ability to anticipate the outcome of a situation is actually positively related to the number of options generated. To test these opposing claims we compared high and low performing critical-care nurses on three simulated critical care scenarios and measured their option generation behaviors and the courses of action pursued. Consistent with RPD and TTF, the data suggest that high performers generate fewer options than low performers during situational assessment. However, counter to RPD and TTF, the current data suggest that the selection of options generated later in the process may actually facilitate better outcomes. Implications for the design of instruction and training materials are discussed.

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.

Skilled perceptual-cognitive performance is assumed to require superior anticipation, yet few researchers have explored how individual differences in processing measures mediate superior performance, particularly when characteristics of the task are systematically changed from trial to trial. This study examined how advance cue information influences anticipation using a simulated cricket batting task. Skilled (n = 10) and less skilled (n = 10) batters moved in response to life-size video images of 36 deliveries by fast and spin bowlers. Skilled participants (mean 37.3, SD 2.8 mm) were significantly more accurate at anticipating ball position as it passed through the strike zone than less skilled batters (mean 48.9, SD 5.9 mm, p < 0.05). Skilled batters fixated on central areas of the body and searched more locations (p < 0.05). Batters used fixations of longer duration and focused more on the ball and hand when viewing spin compared to fast bowlers (both p < 0.05). Visual behaviour is constrained by the task parameters and participant skill level. An analysis of immediate retrospective reports and eye fixations indicated that skilled batters search and encode scenes at a richer and more sophisticated level than less skilled players.

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 line with the proposed themes of this conference and cognizant that gains in understanding are often enhanced notably by a consideration of findings from outside of a particular field (Dunbar, 1995), we demonstrate here how the burgeoning field of sport psychology might inform views of the future of the human factors and ergonomics profession. Four areas of sport psychology are discussed is this regard. The first concerns research on the self-regulatory strategies of athletes operating in stressful competitive environments; the second recent developments in risk taking research; the third research on perceptual-cognitive skills training for performance in dynamic, open sports; and the final area the link between emotion and motor behavior. We appeal to human factors and ergonomics professionals to consider how the two fields could be mutually informative in solving problems common to both fields.

This article provides a discussion of how experts in the sport of orienteering are able to circumvent natural limits on information processing during performance and thus acquire a performance adva...

The study of expert performance has become a popular area for sport psychologists. Knowledge of factors that differentiate those with varying levels of skill is helpful in determining the limits on human performance and in designing suitable training interventions and support mechanisms to facilitate the acquisition of expertise. The expert performance approach may be employed as a systematic framework for studying expertise across domains. The first step is to capture the essence of expert performance in the laboratory under controlled and reproducible conditions. Process-tracing methods and representative task manipulations are then employed to identify the mechanisms mediating expert performance. Finally, the deliberate practice activities in which experts engage, and changes in the nature of mediating processes leading to improvement with practice, are identified using retrospective and longitudinal methods. The approach is recommended to those working in the military to encourage evidence- based practice in developing elite service personnel

This article presents the crisis theory (Bar Eli & Tenenbaum, 1989) and its related approach for determining individual affect-related performance zones (IAPZ: Kamata, Tenenbaum, & Hanin, 2002). The theory and methodology delineate the uniqueness of each individual's ability to appraise stressful conditions and perceive them as functional or dysfunctional to his performance. In addition, the theory and methodology allow incorporating self-regulatory behaviors and coping strategies used during the encounter with situations, which vary in stress appraisal. The article also describes coping mechanisms used to energize (i.e., activate) and relax persons facing situations that vary in cognitive, physical, and affective demands. In particular, the use of imagery and self-talk as coping strategies in stressful situations are presented in more details. Since performance of military personnel involves substantially stressful circumstances (Wallenius, Larsson, & Johansson, 2004), the article advises how sport psych...

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.

The article proposes that individuals who acquire certain psychological support skills may experience accelerated learning and enhanced performance in many domains. In support of this proposal, we present evidence that these skills enhance learning and performance, that they are domain-general in that they can be applied in a variety of domains, and that they can be taught and learned. We also discuss two implications of the skills for current theories of expertise. The first is that any observed transfer of expertise between domains might result as much from the support supplied by application of the skills during learning and performance as from any direct transfer achieved due to two domains sharing similar task elements. The second is that use of these skills might contribute to an understanding of how performers sustain the motivation necessary for the extended period of deliberate practice required to maximize skill acquisition.

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.

Whereas knowledge management relies on processes of knowledge elicitation, there is also a process in which knowledge is “recovered,” typically from archived documents. We conducted a knowledge recovery (KR) effort, going from documents to a structured set of propositions concerning expert knowledge about terrain analysis, discussing landforms, soils, rock types, etc. Assertions and feature associations were recast as over 3,000 propositions. When contrasted with results from previous evaluations of methods of knowledge elicitation, KR was costly in terms of time and effort, suggesting that knowledge-based organizations should make knowledge capture an on-going aspect of work, rather than finding themselves in the “catch-up mode” to recover lost expertise. For both knowledge elicitation and recovery, the knowledge has to be represented in a form that is usable and useful (e.g., instantiation in knowledge bases). We created from the propositions a navigable knowledge model based on over 150 Concept Maps, which were hyperlinked together and to dozens of resources (aerial photos, maps, diagrams, etc.). Such knowledge models are intended to make the “expertise of the past” more useful and usable in training and in performance support.