Context and Cognitive Load in Anticipation Skill: A Novel Application of Cognitive Load Theory

We examined the minimal essential information that is required to successfully recognize patterns in stimuli consisting of multiple dynamic objects. Skilled and less-skilled participants were presented with point light display sequences representing dynamic patterns in an invasion sport and subsequently required to make familiarity based recognition judgments in three different conditions, each of which contained only a select number of features that were present in the initial viewing. No differences in recognition accuracy were observed between skilled and less-skilled participants when just objects located in the periphery were presented. Yet, when presented with just the relative motions of two centrally located attacking objects, skilled participants were significantly more accurate than less-skilled participants and their recognition accuracy improved further when a target object was included against which these relative motions could be judged. Skilled participants can perceive and recognize global patterns on the basis of localized relational information. It is the relative motion between centrally located objects that represents the minimal essential information required to recognize patterns in dynamic displays containing multiple objects. 7th Annual Meeting of Expertise and Skill Acquisition Network (ESAN)