1. The document discusses the role of the senses in detecting cues from the environment and conveying information to the brain during decision making and skill execution in sports. It covers topics like stimulus intensity, speed of cues, noise levels, sensory organ function, and arousal levels. 2. Faster reaction times come from anticipating cues based on experience with a sport as well as optimizing factors like stimulus strength, age, sex, predictability, and warning signals. 3. Proper identification and processing of cues is crucial for sports performance and can be improved by understanding how different sensory systems work and adjusting environmental factors and personal states.

1. 1
Input
The senses
Decision Making
Information processing Output
Feedback

2. • Input - Distance from goals, wind speed
and direction, distance from opponent on
the mark
• Decision making - How will you
hold the ball, run up - how close to mark to
take kick, which side of goals to aim, how
much force to apply
2
• Output - Performing the kick
• Feedback - Did the ball go through the goals? Did I
lean back or have head over the ball? Was my kicking
leg straight? did I drop the ball straight onto boot? Did it
make contact on the right part of the boot?

3.  Your senses are responsible for detecting pieces
of information about the environment and
conveying them to the brain.
 A piece of information is called a cue.
 Hearing, vision, touch, equilibrium (balance) and
proprioception (The unconscious perception of
movement and spatial orientation arising from
stimuli within the body itself.)

4.  Hitting a cricket ball requires the use of vision
(to determine speed, spin and direction of the
ball) and proprioception to feel the contact of
the bat on the ball.
 You can tell from the ‘feel’ of the hit whether you
hit the ball cleanly and powerfully.
 This ability to detect or identify cues is
imperative to learning and performing skills.

5. 5
1) Stimulus intensity or strength of the cue
2) Speed of the cue
3) Noise level
4) Functioning of the sensory organs
5) Arousal Level.

6. 6
•The more intense the stimulus, the quicker it will be detected
•The Australian Football League introduced brightly colored
balls for their night fixtures. The cue (in this case the ball) is
now more visible, so the skill level of the players is less
affected by the dark surroundings.

7. 7
3) Speed of the Cue
• The faster an object is moving, the
quicker the response is needed.
• This is why speed is slowed down
during the learning phase. Ie. ‘T’
Stands in softball make the pitch
stationary so batter has greater
chance of hitting the ball.
2) Noise level
• Affects signal detection through
distraction
•If a signal is not as loud as the
noise around them it is possible
player will miss the cue.
Noise can be described as a
negative cue

8. 8
5) Arousal level**
• Lacking concentration - may
miss cues
• Over arousal - can cause
anxiety and they become
tuned to the wrong cues
4) Functioning of the Sensory organs
• Colour blindness
• Hearing loss
• Sunglare
• Sight- poor sight in tennis would
mean you would be unable to
judge the speed or angle of a
ball and court position

9. 9
For each sport, there is an optimum level of arousal for
maximum performance.
• If arousal is too high - (too pumped up) anxiety and stress level
increases and performer may react to the wrong cues
• Arousal too low - lacks concentration and might miss cues
between these two there is an
optimum level. This changes person
to person, sport to sport.
e.g. different arousal levels required
for boxing compared with archery

10. 10
Reaction time
Response selection
• Decides what response
should be made.
The athlete with the ability to
react faster to stimuli will be
more successful.
Response time
Stimulus identification
• the individual recognises
and identifies the input

11. 11
Anticipation
You will react faster if you develop an
understanding for the relevant cues in the desired
activity.
• This allows for anticipation
• Gives more time to move into position
• Prepare for execution of response
***Anticipation is an educated guess based on relevant cues or stimuli

12. 12
There are many factors that influence reaction time
Type of stimuli e.g. Audio, visual, kinaesthetic
Strength of stimuli
Stronger, larger, brighter - the faster the processing
time
Age Reaction time likely to be quicker in 20’s
Sex Males react faster than females
Likelyhood of stimulus
Faster reaction time when predicable e.g. bat high in
cricket indicates pull shot
Warning signals
Some sort of signal which indicates a stimulus - e.g.
traffic light
Number of choices
When there is only one possible response to stimulus
reaction time faster than to four.
Psychological
refractory period
When 2 cues are displayed together, the first must be
processed before the other can be attended to.
Familiarity of stimuli
Knowing what is going to happen e.g. Starter gun in
comparison to someone saying “go” in a race.