Exploration of the Age-Category Soccer Performance Effects During Ball Possession Small-Sided Games

Small-sided games have been adopted as an integral part of soccer training, however, the use of task constraints by the coach and the action capabilities of both players and teams require further investigation. The aim of this investigation was to explore the age-category effects (under-11: U11, under-15: U15 and under-23: U23) on external training workloads (total distance covered, distance covered while walking, running and sprinting, number of sprints and maximum sprint speed), internal training load metrics (rate of perceived exertion, RPE) and tactical individual actions (passing number with dominant and non-dominant foot, and max passing speed) during 4 vs. 4 ball possession small-sided game constrained within three different playing areas (small: 20 x 15 m, medium: 25 x 20 m, and large: 30 x 25 m). Results revealed substantial differences (all p < .001) for each specific playing area observed across many of the external workload measures. For every area analysed, U23 players covered more distance walking, whereas U11 and U15 players covered more distances at higher intensities. Additionally, significant differences were found for the RPE (small playing area: p = .001; large playing area: p < .001) with U23 and U15 players showing higher scores compared with U11 ones. It can be concluded that a 4 vs. 4 ball possession small-sided game can provide different performance related stimuli to players, depending on age category and the playing surface area. Therefore, coaches and individuals involved with training and development of soccer players across all age groups should be aware of the key variables highlighted in this study before planning training drills.

Interactions Between Visual Working Memory, Attention, and Color Categories: a Pupillometry Study

Recent studies have found that visual working memory (VWM) for color shows a categorical bias: observers typically remember colors as more prototypical to the category they belong to than they actually are. Here, we further examine color-category effects on VWM using pupillometry. Participants remembered a color for later reproduction on a color wheel. During the retention interval, a colored probe was presented, and we measured the pupil constriction in response to this probe, assuming that the strength of constriction reflects the visual saliency of the probe. We found that the pupil initially constricted most strongly for non-matching colors that were maximally different from the memorized color; this likely reflects a lack of visual adaptation for these colors, which renders them more salient than memory-matching colors (shown before). Strikingly, this effect reversed later in time, such that pupil constriction was more prolonged for memory-matching colors as compared to non-matching colors; this likely reflects that memory-matching colors capture attention more strongly, and perhaps for a longer time, than non-matching colors do. We found no effects of color categories on pupil constriction: after controlling for color distance, (non-matching) colors from the same category as the memory color did not result in a different pupil response as compared to colors from a different category; however, we did find that behavioral responses were biased by color categories. In summary, we found that pupil constriction to colored probes reflects both visual adaptation and VWM content, but, unlike behavioral measures, is not notably affected by color categories.

Eating disorder symptoms and foraging for food related items

Background Foraging tasks have recently been increasingly used to investigate visual attention. Visual attention can be biased when certain stimuli capture our attention, especially threatening or anxiety-provoking stimuli, but such effects have not been addressed in foraging studies. Methods We measured potential attentional bias associated with eating disorder symptoms to food related stimuli with our previously developed iPad foraging task. Forty-four participants performed a foraging task where they were instructed to tap predesignated food related targets (healthy and unhealthy) and other non-food objects and completed four self-report questionnaires measuring symptoms of eating disorders. Participants were split into two groups based on their questionnaire scores, a symptom group and no symptom group. Results The foraging results suggest that there are differences between the groups on switch costs and target selection times (intertarget times) but they were only statistically significant when extreme-group analyses (EGA) were used. There were also notable food versus non-food category effects in the foraging patterns. Conclusions The results suggest that foraging tasks of this sort can be used to assess attentional biases and we also speculate that they may eventually be used to treat them through attention bias modification. Additionally, the category effects that we see between food items and other items are highly interesting and encouraging. At the same time, task sensitivity will need to be improved. Finally, future tests of clinical samples could provide a clearer picture of the effects of eating disorder symptoms on foraging for food.

Individual Differences in the Connectivity of Left and Right Anterior Temporal Lobes Relate to Modality and Category Effects in Semantic Categorisation

Contemporary neuroscientific accounts suggest that ventral anterior temporal lobe (ATL) regions act as a bilateral heteromodal semantic hub. However, research also shows graded functional differences between the hemispheres relating to linguistic versus non-linguistic semantic tasks and to knowledge of objects versus people. Individual differences in connectivity from bilateral ATL and between left and right ATL might therefore give rise to differences in function within this system. We investigated whether the relative strength of intrinsic connectivity from left and right ATL would relate to differences in performance on semantic tasks. We examined resting-state fMRI in 74 individuals and, in a separate session, examined semantic categorisation, manipulating stimulus type (famous faces versus landmarks) and modality of presentation (visual versus verbal). We found that people with greater connectivity between left and right ATL were more efficient at categorising landmarks, especially when these were presented visually. In addition, participants who showed stronger connectivity from right than left ATL to medial occipital cortex showed more efficient semantic categorisation of landmarks regardless of modality of presentation. These findings show that individual differences in the intrinsic connectivity of left and right ATL are associated with effects of category and modality in semantic categorisation. The results can be interpreted in terms of graded differences in the strengths of inputs from ‘spoke’ regions, such as regions of visual cortex, to a bilateral yet partially segregated semantic ‘hub’, encompassing left and right ATL.

Biased by the Group: Memory for an Emotional Expression Biases Towards the Ensemble

An emotional expression can be misremembered as more similar to previously seen expressions than it actually was – demonstrating inductive category effects for emotional expressions. Given that memory is influenced over time, we sought to determine whether memory for a single expression would be similarly influenced by other expressions viewed simultaneously. In other words, we test whether the ability to encode statistical features of an ensemble (i.e., ensemble encoding) is leveraged when attempting to recall a single expression from the ensemble. In three preregistered experiments, participants saw an ensemble of 4 expressions, one neutral and the three either happy or sad. After a delay, participants were asked to reproduce the neutral face by adjusting a response face’s expression. In Experiment 1, the ensemble comprised images of the same actor; in Experiments 2 and 3, images were comprised of individuals varying race and gender. In each experiment we demonstrated that even after only a single exposure, memory for the neutral expression in the happy group was biased happier relative to the same expression in the sad group. Data and syntax can be found at https://osf.io/gcbez/.

The colour lexicon of the Serbian language - a study of dark blue and dark red colour categories Part 2: Categorical facilitation with Serbian colour terms

Part 1 of this study (Jakovljev & Zdravkovic, 2018) isolated two frequent and salient non- BCTs in the Serbian language: teget ?dark blue? and bordo ?dark red?, that segregate the blue and the red part of the colour space respectively. Now we conducted two experiments to additionally test the cognitive salience of these terms, investigating whether they can produce the category effects in a colour discrimination task. We demonstrated within? and between-participants agreement about the placement of the boundary in the blue and the red part of the colour space, additionally showing that Serbian speakers have distinctive representations of these categories. Analysis of RT in the discrimination task showed category effects ? participants were faster when discriminating colour pairs that belong to different linguistic categories than the pairs from the same category. These results for the first time demonstrated category effect in the Serbian language as well as the category effect in speeded discrimination of the red part of the colour space for any language. They also support views that category effect is linked to higher cognitive processes; hence it can be language specific.