Speaker
Description
Over the past forty years, sport psychologists and cognitive psychologists have developed experimental paradigms to investigate the perceptual-motor processes underlying sport actions. Many studies have been conducted and today a large body of evidence is available, particularly in relation to the visual modality. However, in real word situations visual stimuli are not the only ones available, and other types of sensory stimuli – such as the auditory ones – can provide significant information. This information (e.g. from the sound of the hand-ball impact or from the footsteps) can be used more or less consciously by athletes to understand the dynamics of actions. In my talk, I will present some studies that we have developed at the University of Trieste – as well as others available in literature – to provide an overview of evidence on the role of ecological sounds in sports. These studies will show that athletes can use ecological sounds to recognize their own performance among those of other athletes, to predict the outcome of actions and to improve their performance. In addition, I will present some findings from another line of research looking at the impact of crowd noise on the performance and decision making of athletes and referees, based on data collected during the pandemic at closed-door games. Some ongoing projects and future directions of this research area will be discussed at the end of the presentation.
