The Effect Of Anticipatory Mental Imagery On The Judgment Of The Direction Of Intercepting Flying Soccer In The Penalty Kick

When no objective stimulus is available for sensory system,the "predictive coding" in the senior cortex of brain formed by existing knowledge would make the individual have a kind of subjective bias or tendency towards the decision-making of the forthcoming stimulus,that’s called anticipatory mental imagery.Anticipatory mental imagery is a specific top-down processing,its essence to affect the process of perception is perceptual modulation.The experience,as a kind of top-down information,can promote the performance of "experts" to a certain extent.So,what kind of influence does the top-down information have on the low experience groups?In the field of sport psychology,we have studied too much about the bottom-up processing,which makes the exploration of top-down processing nearly stay blank.In view of this,we choose penalty kick as the research background,which requires top-down perceptual processing.We want to know how anticipatory mental imagery influence one to judge the direction of the flying ball.Considering the speciality of the concerned question,added with the external validity,we choose different difficulties of task to represent different prejudge conditions.Thus,in our pre-experiment,we identified the expertise advantage and select two time points representative of prejudge according to ACC 、 RT 、 and confidence level.Furthermore,by comparing answers from different groups after the perexprement,we identified the hyposis that top-down processing is prevalent in experienced group.That makes a good start for us to explore the influence of anticipatory mental imagery in our official experiment.We choose 26 common male undergraduates in the formal experiment.The behavioral data shows that:(1)the main effect of task difficulty is significant,lower accuracy and higher reaction time is obvious in high difficulty of task;(2)the main effect of anticipatory mental imagery is significant,we found a promoting effect when the contents of anticipatory mental imagery is consistent with the actual presented stimulus,and a baffling effect when inconsistent,and no effect when anticipatory mental imagery is absent;(3)the interaction between task difficulty and anticipatory mental imagery is significant on accuracy but not on reaction time;(4)percent analysis verified that only under the high difficult task can anticipatory mental imagery affect one’s making of decision.In ERP analysis,we found a significant main effect of anticipatory mental imagery on C1、P2、N2、LPC.When the contents of anticipatory mental imagery is consistent with the actual presented stimulus,more conflicts are reduced(N2 amplitude is significantly higher than the consistent condition when inconsisitent),and the degree of information processing is deepen(LPC amplitude is significantly higher than he inconsistent condition when consitent).However,this kind of processing will not occupy too much cognitive resource;on the contrary,it will save cognitive resources(average P2 amplitude when inconsistent or consistent condition is significantly lower than without anticipatory mental imagery).The results fit our hyposis well overall.Anticipatory mental imagery can affect the judgement of the soccer’s direction.Under consistent condition,anticipatory mental imagery can make one to act more accurate and quicker,under inconsisiten condition,the effects are reversed.Moreover,the promoting effect of anticipatory mental imagery can deepen the processing of information meanwhile consume less cognitive resource.Both behavior and ERP results manifest that under consistent condition,anticipatory mental imagery plays an important in a successful intercepting ball,pointing out that coach and goalkeeper should not only know yourself but also your opponent.And pay attention to the establishment and application of anticipatory mental imagery in daily training.