Sound matters: The impact of auditory deprivation on movement precision in rowing

Prospects for Augmenting Team Interactions with Real-Time Coordination-Based Measures in Human-Autonomy Teams

Complex work in teams requires coordination across team members and their technology as well as the ability to change and adapt over time to achieve effective performance. To support such complex interactions, recent efforts have worked toward the design of adaptive human-autonomy teaming systems that can provide feedback in or near real time to achieve the desired individual or team results. However, while significant advancements have been made to better model and understand the dynamics of team interaction and its relationship with task performance, appropriate measures of team coordination and computational methods to detect changes in coordination have not yet been widely investigated. Having the capacity to measure coordination in real time is quite promising as it provides the opportunity to provide adaptive feedback that may influence and regulate teams' coordination patterns and, ultimately, drive effective team performance. A critical requirement to reach this potential is having the theoretical and empirical foundation from which to do so. Therefore, the first goal of the paper is to review approaches to coordination dynamics, identify current research gaps, and draw insights from other areas, such as social interaction, relationship science, and psychotherapy. The second goal is to collate extant work on feedback and advance ideas for adaptive feedback systems that have potential to influence coordination in a way that can enhance the effectiveness of team interactions. In addressing these two goals, this work lays the foundation as well as plans for the future of human-autonomy teams that augment team interactions using coordination-based measures.

The Effects of Motionless Interventions Based on Visual-Auditory Instructions With Sonification on Learning a Rhythmic Motor Skill

Our aim in this study was to investigate the effects of motionless interventions, based on visual-auditory integration with a sonification technique, on the learning a complex rhythmic motor skill. We recruited 22 male participants with high physical fitness and provided them four acquisition sessions in which to practice hurdle running, based on a visual-auditory instructional pattern. Next, we divided participants into three groups: visual-auditory, auditory, and control. In six sessions of motionless interventions, with no physical practice, participants in the visual-auditory group received a visual-auditory pattern similar to their experience during the acquisition period. The auditory group only listened to the sound of sonified movements of an expert hurdler, and the control group received no instructional interventions. Finally, participants in all three groups underwent post-intervention and transfer tests to determine their errors in the spatial and relative timing of their leading leg's knee angular displacement. Both visual-auditory and auditory groups had significantly less spatial error than the control group. However, there were no significant group differences in relative timing in any test phase. These results indicate that the use of the sonification technique in the form of visual-auditory instruction adapted to the athletes' needs benefitted perception-sensory capacities to improve motor skill learning.

Enhancing Perceptual-Motor Skills in Sports: The Role of Ecological Sounds

Starting approximately from the beginning of the new millennium, a series of studies highlighted that auditory information deriving from biological motion can significantly influence the behavioral, cognitive and neurophysiological processes involved in the perception and execution of complex movements. In particular, it was observed that an appropriate use of sounds deriving from one's own movement promotes improvements in the movement execution itself. Two main approaches can be used, namely the sonification one or the ecological sound one; the former is based on the conversion of physiological and/or physical movement data into sound, while the latter is based on the use of auditory recordings of movement sounds as models. In the present article, some of the main applications of both approaches-especially the latter-to the domains of sport and motor rehabilitation are reviewed, with the aim of addressing two questions: Is it possible to consider rhythm as a Gestalt of human movement? If so, is it possible to build up cognitive strategies to improve/standardize movement performance from this Gestalt? As with most topics in science, a definitive answer is not possible, yet the evidence leads us to lean toward a positive answer to both questions.

Auditory Information Accelerates the Visuomotor Reaction Speed of Elite Badminton Players in Multisensory Environments

Although vision is the dominating sensory system in sports, many situations require multisensory integration. Faster processing of auditory information in the brain may facilitate time-critical abilities such as reaction speed however previous research was limited by generic auditory and visual stimuli that did not consider audio-visual characteristics in ecologically valid environments. This study investigated the reaction speed in response to sport-specific monosensory (visual and auditory) and multisensory (audio-visual) stimulation. Neurophysiological analyses identified the neural processes contributing to differences in reaction speed. Nineteen elite badminton players participated in this study. In a first recording phase, the sound profile and shuttle speed of smash and drop strokes were identified on a badminton court using high-speed video cameras and binaural recordings. The speed and sound characteristics were transferred into auditory and visual stimuli and presented in a lab-based experiment, where participants reacted in response to sport-specific monosensory or multisensory stimulation. Auditory signal presentation was delayed by 26 ms to account for realistic audio-visual signal interaction on the court. N1 and N2 event-related potentials as indicators of auditory and visual information perception/processing, respectively were identified using a 64-channel EEG. Despite the 26 ms delay, auditory reactions were significantly faster than visual reactions (236.6 ms vs. 287.7 ms, p < 0.001) but still slower when compared to multisensory stimulation (224.4 ms, p = 0.002). Across conditions response times to smashes were faster when compared to drops (233.2 ms, 265.9 ms, p < 0.001). Faster reactions were paralleled by a lower latency and higher amplitude of the auditory N1 and visual N2 potentials. The results emphasize the potential of auditory information to accelerate the reaction time in sport-specific multisensory situations. This highlights auditory processes as a promising target for training interventions in racquet sports.

The Role of Vision in Maintaining Stroke Synchronization in K2 Crew-Boat Kayaking

This study investigated the role of vision in maintaining stroke synchronization in crew-boat sprint kayaking. Sixteen sprint kayakers from a national team were paired into eight two-seater (K2) crews. Each crew paddled at high intensity with the back paddler's eyes open or closed in a randomized order. Using video analysis, stroke synchronization was quantified by the timing offsets between the front and back paddlers at four key positions of the stroke. All crews could paddle continuously without capsize or stopping under both visual conditions. In the absence of vision, neither 200-m performance time (p = 0.23, d = 0.47, small effect size) nor stroke rate (p = 0.41, d = 0.31, small effect size) was severely affected. There were no significant effects of vision on stroke synchronization offsets between the front and back paddlers across all key positions (all p > 0.05). Highly skilled paddlers likely relied on the kinesthetic perception to maintain the boat synchronization when visual information was not available.