TY  - JOUR
A1  - Güldenpenning, Iris
A1  - Koester, Dirk
A1  - Kunde, Wilfried
A1  - Weigelt, Matthias
A1  - Schack, Thomas
T1  - Motor expertise modulates the unconscious processing of human body postures
JF  - Experimental Brain Research
N2  - Little is known about the cognitive background of unconscious visuomotor control of complex sports movements. Therefore, we investigated the extent to which novices and skilled high-jump athletes are able to identify visually presented body postures of the high jump unconsciously. We also asked whether or not the manner of processing differs (qualitatively or quantitatively) between these groups as a function of their motor expertise. A priming experiment with not consciously perceivable stimuli was designed to determine whether subliminal priming of movement phases (same vs. different movement phases) or temporal order (i.e. natural vs. reversed movement order) affects target processing. Participants had to decide which phase of the high jump (approach vs. flight phase) a target photograph was taken from. We found a main effect of temporal order for skilled athletes, that is, faster reaction times for prime-target pairs that reflected the natural movement order as opposed to the reversed movement order. This result indicates that temporal-order information pertaining to the domain of expertise plays a critical role in athletes’ perceptual capacities. For novices, data analyses revealed an interaction between temporal order and movement phases. That is, only the reversed movement order of flight-approach pictures increased processing time. Taken together, the results suggest that the structure of cognitive movement representation modulates unconscious processing of movement pictures and points to a functional role of motor representations in visual perception.
KW  - Subliminal priming
KW  - Perception
KW  - Cognitive representation
KW  - High-jump photographs
Y1  - 2011
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-141089
VL  - 213
ER  -