Quiet Eye supports winner shots in a simulated table tennis competition.

BACKGROUND: QE is defined as the final fixation on a specific location or object in the visuomotor workspace, for a minimum of 100 ms, that enables the athletes to gather relevant information before a critical movement. Several lines of research indicate that QE contributes to sports performance. However, its contribution to performance is derived mainly from research investigating isolated motor tasks. Therefore, little is known about its contribution in realistic competitional settings. METHODS: The present study determined whether QE contributes to table tennis performance obtained from matches played in a simulated competition. Athletes (N = 10) performed two matches, one against a difficult and one against an accessible opponent. Gaze behavior was captured using Tobii Glasses 2. RESULTS: We found that athletes made longer QE before winner balls (i.e., balls that scored a point), compared to forced and unforced errors (pbonferroni  = 0.005, t = -4.45; pbonferroni <0.001, t = -6.45). Confirming that QE contributes to performance in a real match even in a competitional setting. We found no significant effect for the difficulty of the match, nor an interaction between the difficulty of the match and the type of shots Fs (1, 9) < 2.26, ps >0.16 0.70, η2 ps < 0.20. CONCLUSIONS: The present study provides evidence for QE's contribution to sports performance investigated in a "gold standard" ecological environment. More specifically, it provides evidence that QE gradually increases with the quality of the shot. Identical patterns were found regardless of the difficulty of the match.

Implicit learning of regularities followed by realistic body movements in virtual reality.

The existence of implicit (unconscious) learning has been demonstrated in several laboratory paradigms. Researchers have also suggested that it plays a role in complex real-life human activities. For instance, in social situations, we may follow unconscious behaviour scripts or intuitively anticipate the reaction of familiar persons based on nonconscious cues. Still, it is difficult to make inferences about the involvement of implicit learning in realistic contexts, given that this phenomenon has been demonstrated, almost exclusively, using simple artificial stimuli (e.g., learning structured patterns of letters). In addition, recent analyses show that the amount of unconscious knowledge learned in these tasks has been overestimated by random measurement error. To overcome these limitations, we adapted the artificial grammar learning (AGL) task, and exposed participants (N = 93), in virtual reality, to a realistic agent that executed combinations of boxing punches. Unknown to participants, the combinations were structured by a complex artificial grammar. In a subsequent test phase, participants accurately discriminated novel grammatical from nongrammatical combinations, showing they had acquired the grammar. For measuring awareness, we used trial-by-trial subjective scales, and an analytical method that accounts for the possible overestimation of unconscious knowledge due to regression to the mean. These methods conjointly showed strong evidence for implicit and for explicit learning. The present study is the first to show that humans can implicitly learn, in VR, knowledge regarding realistic body movements, and, further, that implicit knowledge extracted in AGL is robust when accounting for its possible inflation by random measurement error.

Implicit and explicit learning of socio-emotional information in a dynamic interaction with a virtual avatar.

Implicit learning (IL) deals with the non-conscious acquisition of structural regularities from the environment. IL is often deemed essential for acquiring regularities followed by social stimuli (e.g., other persons' behavior), hence is hypothesized to play a role in typical social functioning. However, our understanding of how this process might operate in social contexts is limited for two main reasons. First, while IL is highly sensitive to the characteristics of the surface stimuli upon which it operates, most IL studies have used surface stimuli with limited social validity (e.g., letters, symbols, etc.). Second, while the social environment is dynamic (i.e., our behaviors and reactions influence those of our social partners and vice-versa), the bulk of IL research employed noninteractive paradigms. Using a novel task, we examine whether IL is involved in the acquisition of regularities from a dynamic interaction with a realistic real-life-like agent. Participants (N = 115) interacted with a cinematic avatar that displayed different facial expressions. Their task was to regulate the avatar's expression to a specified level. Unbeknownst to them, an equation mediated the relationship between their responses and the avatar's expressions. Learning occurred in the task, as participants gradually increased their ability to bring the avatar in the target state. Subjective measures of awareness revealed that participants acquired both implicit and explicit knowledge from the task. This is the first study to show that IL operates in interactive situations upon socially relevant surface stimuli, facilitating future investigations of the role that IL plays in (a)typical social functioning.

Unconscious knowledge of rewards guides instrumental behaviors via conscious judgments.

The demonstration that unconscious learning supports instrumental behaviors (i.e., choosing the stimuli that lead to rewards) is central for the tenet that unconscious cognition sustains human adaptation. Recent studies, using reliable subliminal conditioning paradigms and improved awareness measurements have found evidence against unconscious knowledge sustaining accurate instrumental responses. The present preregistered study proposes a paradigm, in which unconscious processing is stimulated not by subliminally exposing the predictive (conditioned) stimuli, but by employing predictive regularities that are complex and difficult to detect consciously. Participants (N = 211) were exposed to letter strings that, unknown to them, were built from two complex artificial grammars: a "rewarded" or a "non-rewarded" grammar. On each trial, participants memorized a string, and subsequently had to discriminate the memorized string from a distractor. Correct discriminations were rewarded only when the identified string followed the rewarded grammar, but not when it followed the non-rewarded grammar. In a subsequent test phase, participants were presented with new strings from the rewarded and from the unrewarded grammar. Their task was now to directly choose the strings from the rewarded grammar, in order to collect more rewards. A trial-by-trial awareness measure revealed that participants accurately choose novel strings from the rewarded grammar when they had no conscious knowledge of the grammar. The awareness measure also showed that participants were accurate only when the unconsciously learned grammar led to conscious judgments. The present study shows that unconscious knowledge can guide instrumental responses, but only to the extent it supports conscious judgments.

Quiet Eye as a Mechanism for Table Tennis Performance under Fatigue and Complexity.

QE is the final ocular fixation that precedes critical athletic movements and that enables athletes to gather relevant information and organize their subsequent movement. Although little is known about the factors sustaining performance in table tennis, to date there has been no investigation to assess QE as a contributor to table tennis performance. Furthermore, there is limited research regarding the influence on QE of factors that are known to impact performance, such as task complexity and fatigue. In a within-subjects experimental design, we manipulated fatigue (high vs low) and task complexity (high vs low). Eleven elite table tennis players (mage =14.72 years, mexperience = 7.27 years) underwent each of the four resulting conditions. Athletes made longer QE before hit versus missed shots (p <.001, η2p = .795) and QE and performance decreased under fatigue (p = 0.02, η2p = .628; p = .002, η2p = .62), but we did not detect a significant effect of complexity on QE (p = .352, η2p = .087). This study is one of the first to show that QE sustains performance in a dynamic sport, that is table tennis, and that QE is affected by fatigue.

Evaluative conditioning of artificial grammars: Evidence that subjectively-unconscious structures bias affective evaluations of novel stimuli.

Evaluative conditioning (EC) refers to the acquisition of emotional valence by an initially neutral stimulus (conditioned stimulus [CS]) after being paired with an emotional stimulus (unconditioned stimulus [US]). An important issue regards whether, when participants are unaware of the CS-US contingency, the affective valence can generalize to new stimuli that share similarities with the CS. Previous studies have shown that generalization of EC effects appears only when participants are aware of the contingencies, but we suggest that this is because (a) the contingencies typically used in these studies are salient and easy to detect consciously, and (b) the performance-based measures of awareness (so-called "objective measures"), typically used in these studies, tend to overestimate the amount of available conscious knowledge. We report a preregistered study in which participants (N = 217) were exposed to letter strings generated from two complex artificial grammars that are difficult to decipher consciously. Stimuli from one grammar were paired with positive USs, whereas those from the other grammar were paired with negative USs. Subsequently, participants evaluated new, previously unseen, stimuli from the positively conditioned grammar more positively than new stimuli from the negatively conditioned grammar. Importantly, this effect appeared even when trial-by-trial subjective measures indicated lack of relevant conscious knowledge. We provide evidence for the generalization of EC effects even without subjective awareness of the structures that enable those generalizations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).