Information Processing and Performance

The model as a whole

Information processing is the sequence a performer works through between something happening in the game and their movement in response. It is usually drawn as a model with input, decision making and output, with a feedback loop running back to the start.

Input is the display and the sensory information taken from it. Decision making covers perception and the choice of response. Output is the response produced by the effector mechanism.

Do not learn the stages as a bare list. Learn them as a chain, where each stage changes the information into a form the next stage can use.

Input: the display and sensory information

The display is the sporting situation the performer is facing. In a game it is constantly changing: the position of the ball, the movement of opponents, the position of teammates and the state of the surface are all part of it.

Sensory information is taken from the display through the sense organs. The eyes detect the position and movement of the ball and other players, the ears pick up sound such as a teammate calling or a bat striking the ball, and the kinaesthetic sense reports the position and movement of the performer's own limbs.

The senses cannot take everything in at once, so a performer who tries to attend to all of the display ends up overloaded. This is the link to selective attention, covered in the memory topic.

Perception and selective attention

Perception is the interpretation of the sensory information. It is where raw signals become something meaningful — the brain recognises that a moving shape is an opponent closing down space.

Perception is not passive. The performer uses selective attention to focus on the relevant cues in the display and filter out the irrelevant ones, such as the crowd or a teammate's movement away from the ball.

This is what separates experienced performers from beginners. An experienced player knows which cues matter, so they take in the important information quickly and can act on it.

Decision making and limited channel capacity

Decision making is where the performer selects the response. The perceptual mechanism has already interpreted the display, and the decision mechanism chooses from the options available what to do about it.

The performer can only deal with a limited amount of information at one time. The single-channel hypothesis explains this: the performer can process only one stimulus at a time, so while one decision is being made a second stimulus cannot be processed until the first is complete.

Limited capacity affects performance directly. If too much information arrives at once, or if the decision is difficult, processing slows and the response is delayed or wrong. A badminton player facing a fast smash has very little time to decide, so they must take in less information and commit to the decision quickly.

Skill reduces the demand on the system. Once a decision has been made many times it takes less capacity, so the performer can take in more of the display without slowing down.

The effector mechanism and the response

Once a decision has been made it has to be carried out. The effector mechanism is the muscles and glands that put the decision into action.

The decision is sent as nerve impulses to the appropriate muscles, which contract to produce the response — the movement the performer actually makes. The response is the output of the whole system.

Response time measures how long this takes from the stimulus appearing to the movement being completed, and the quality of the response depends on both the accuracy of the decision and the skill of the muscles that carry it out.

Feedback closes the loop

The response does not end the process. Feedback is information about the response that is fed back into the system, so the performer can compare what they did with what they intended.

Feedback returns to both perception and decision making. It allows the performer to correct a movement while it is happening and to adjust the stored information for the next attempt.

This is what makes the model a loop rather than a straight line, and it is the bridge between information processing and the feedback topic.

How performers develop anticipation

Anticipation grows out of the perception stage. Rather than waiting for the ball to arrive before deciding, an experienced performer reads the display early and starts preparing the response before the action is completed.

They do this by attending to the cues that appear earliest and predict the outcome — the angle of an opponent's body, the position of their racket or foot, the shape of their run-up. Because these cues are recognised from past experience, the decision can be made sooner.

This is why anticipation saves time. If the decision is made before the ball arrives, the performer has more of the response time left for the movement itself, which is an advantage when the pace of the game is high.

• Practise against opponents who vary their cues, so the performer learns which ones predict the outcome.
• Play in game-related conditions where the display is realistic, rather than only in drills with a predictable feed.
• Give the performer exposure to higher-level opposition, so the cues come faster and are harder to read.