Chapter 2 - Processing Information
and Making Decisions
Check Your Understanding
1. Describe the information- processing activities that might occur in the stimulus
identification, response selection and movement programming stage for the
sport/game presented in this task card.
First stage is the stimulus-identification stage, where the presentation of a
stimulus must be detected and identified. As a stimulus contacts the body’s
sensory systems, it is taken in and encoded such that the neurological
impulses activate the appropriate mental representation and knowledge
associated with the information. Patterns of movement are also detected,
such as whether other objects are moving, in what direction and how
quickly they are moving, and so on, as would be necessary for driving a car
in heavy traffic.
Following the detection and identification of the stimulus, a decision must
be made regarding how to respond. This stage is referred to as the
response-selection stage. This stage acts on the information received from
stimulus identification stage and is concerned with deciding which
movement to make. In driving example, the choice from available response
might be to overtake another vehicle, to slow the car, or to make an
avoidance maneuver.
This next stage receives the decision (information) about which movement
to make and is responsible for organising our system to carry out the
appropriate movement. It is called the movement programming stage. In
the driving example, if the response-selection stage determined that a
braking response was required, then the organization of the motor program
responsible for executing a braking action would occur in the movement-
programming stage.
2. Describe and provide two (2) examples where spatial anticipation and temporal
anticipation are important to a sport/game outcome.
Spatial anticipation is the ability to predict when or where something is going to
be. In sports, it allows the player to prepare a stance to ready up that pent up
energy and release. an example is baseball and badminton. there is a lot of
GROUP TASK
