Commentary: Life is unfair, and so are racing sports: some athletes can randomly benefit from alerting effects due to inconsistent starting procedures

Frontiers in Psychology

Edwin S. Dalmaijer¹ 

关键词: alerting;    temporal expectancy;    foreperiod;    racing;    sports;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00119

学科分类：心理学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

In some racing sports, regulations require a variable time between the referee's “Ready” cue, and the starting shot. Psychological experiments demonstrate that the length of a pause between such a non-spatial cue and the following signal affects the response to that signal: Reaction times are lowest after an optimal interval of 500 ms, and progressively increase as the interval increases to several seconds (Posner and Boies, 1971; Sanders, 1975). This phenomenon is attributed to a short-lived boost in arousal, and is referred to as the alerting effect. In a recent Perspective article in Frontiers in Psychology, Dalmaijer et al. (2015) argue that alerting effects could allow athletes who start with shorter ready-start intervals (RSIs) to respond quicker to the starting shot. They support their claim with a correlation between RSIs and race times from the 500-m speed-skating event at the 2010 Winter Olympics (Figure ​(Figure1A),1A), and suggested temporal variability should be removed from starting procedures in racing sports to avoid biased competitions.

【 授权许可】

CC BY