Specifying & Non Specifying Information in Batted Ball Sports with Ben Franks

Welcome back to Finding the Edge Podcast. I'm Garrett Boyam joined with Robert Fry and AJ Ferrara and today we have on Ben Franks. I met Ben back when I was with Emergence and became familiar with his work there. I got super excited because you were doing gays behavior when I first got to know about you. And I was super excited because with baseball gays behavior stuff with hitting was was kind of in vogue you can say at that at that point in time.

And it was really awesome to hear your talk at the Sport Movement skill Conference. And then you spoke again this year and I got even more excited because you were talking about cricket and that was even closer to the sport that we're all very much interested in, which is baseball. So I wanted to have you on to kind of dive more into your presentation and kind of there was one specific question to

that Sean actually asked you. That also got me very intrigued because we want to, I'm very much trying to figure out OK, how do these ideas practically work with with like in their practical application. And so, you know, there's a lot of controversy about, you know, information profit processing versus like an ecological approach and the different ways that we do practice design and all that sort of stuff.

And so now that hearing a little bit about, you know, how you've kind of gone more from a researcher to being a little bit more closely on the field, I kind of want to hear a little bit more about your story. So to start off then, you kind of want to give us a little introduction of like, who you are, because I bet a lot of people in the baseball world are not super familiar with who is Ben Franks.

Yeah, I'm terrible at these. So I guess my my job now is a senior lecturer in Applied Coaching Sciences at Oxford Brookshire University. It's a bit of a made-up job title I I teach some skill acquisition stuff and some coaching stuff and some performance analysis bits. And then as part of that kind of my, my role as a researcher within this kind of broader ecological space.

My PhD specifically is looking at skilled intentionality within cricket, as you said which is just a much longer slightly more tedious version of of of baseball. But you get like lots of like lunch and teas over a period of five days which is quite nice. But yeah, and then I've always tried to kind of remain quite close to the field and quite

close to coaching. And now it's always been quite a big part of the work I try to do and and it was within my research, is to make it as real and as close to the context as possible and that's kind of kind of generated my my interest in kind of gaze behaviour research. Particularly with with the. Quiet eye initially, and now more. Broadly in visual search behaviours, it's just because.

It's such a nice way to look at kind of real natural behaviours in the in environments that as closely replicate what people do in the performance context as much as possible. And it all kind of stemmed from from my masters, in which I was what I first presented on it. The at the the Emergency

conference a while back. The SMC conference which looked at goalkeepers use of visual search behaviours again in various different kind of conditions and environments which were like increasingly representative to the performance environment. And yeah, just like the real kind of messy reality of that what I found really interesting and the challenges along the way of trying to do real world research. And yeah, just find some really

cool stuff. And kind of off the back of that publishing that a couple of years ago now kind of linked to that broader ecological, ecological sense around like the fact that there is some variability that there is some kind of unique signatures as such in how people engage with like the visual information out there in the world and how that then impacts. Movement. Patterns and all that kind of broader stuff. So, so yeah, I'm actually not coaching anymore.

Up until December, I was very much somebody tried to be practical, but I've stepped back from kind of practical coaching stuff to become a proper researcher for a little bit to see if I can actually do some research and finish my PhD and actually get some projects off the ground rather than trying to do 1000 different things. I guess for me, I think a good, maybe a good place to start is 1. And I'm going to put two questions together.

One, the the question that Sean asked you and then I think it ties well with. And so the question was was how has your views of ecological dynamics changed over time? How has it been honed or I think honed is the right word? And then how did you like what? What is ecological dynamics to you? Like I I think you know, how did you get into it? I think it was the is really the question that I want to ask. There's how did you get into

ecological dynamics? And then how has that changed over time, now that you've done a Master's and now you're teaching and going for your PhD? Yeah, so I come across it during my undergraduate I was. I was quite fortunate to have Will Roberts and Danny Newcomb as my 2 lecturers, who obviously wrote the the latest edition of the Constrained Approach Book with Ian Renshaw and Keith David.

So I was really fortunate in that sense to work really closely with them for the three years of my undergraduate. And then will. Robert supervised my masters, then Danny employed me at the university initially. So yeah, I I was really fortunate to work really closely with those guys and they signposted me towards that stuff and I probably then like they're super applied in Will and Danny. Like their ability to apply this stuff is is phenomenal.

And I probably took a more truer sense to the theory side of things rather than always like being super, super practical. I was I was way more interested in like the mechanics that underpin direct perception and stuff like that. So I kind of ran that way a little bit more and and then that's kind of shaped my views to I'd I'd try to locate myself more in ecological psychology rather than ecological dynamics.

Just because of I guess the obviously the massive huge debates that go along all over Twitter and around the ecological approaches and more traditional approaches or kind of meshed approaches or 40 whatever it is and that that kind of space and it there are some fair challenges of

ecological dynamics. So obviously my PhD supervisor currently kind of pushed me more towards the traditional ecological psychology sort of things and like dealing with like real life information kind of stuff and the perception of proper information. So I probably drifted more towards ecological psychology over the last few years away from ecological dynamics, but that was more just the progress of my PhD which led me down that path.

And I think ecological dynamics is still is still really useful theoretical framework for coaches. But there is some, there is some messiness and there's some bits that have been cherry picked at times. And it doesn't always. There's there's some contemporary issues which is being solved gradually just because it's a very new theory, which isn't to discredit the theory. I think that's really beneficial, but it's gone through that evolution over the last couple of years, but. It's.

Probably why I've drifted more towards kind of eco cycle. Also where I'm a perception researcher, it just it fits better for my for a lack of me a little bit. I'd worry less about the movement patterns underpin it, which obviously what ecological dynamics has its strengths in from a dynamic systems perspective. And Ben, you you talk a little bit about it, you know the different some of the differences between ecological psychology and ecological dynamics.

In your experience these past few years, what are some things within ecological psychology that you've kind of uncovered or thought about in a different way than, say, you know, when you were on the side of ecological dynamics? I think that the key one is the treatment of that, the treatment of information that we perceive. I think in ecological psychology obviously still has it's more traditional roots within the mathematics of it all, which isn't massively my strength,

but. I feel like from AS. From a research perspective, I do do think it's much more much more powerful in that sense. And truly understanding what information is, is specifying and which information is lawful to behaviour. Whereas ecological dynamics is kind of at times just lumped information together as specifying and non specifying and doesn't treat always treat the underlying bits of it, but more just because it rests on the assumptions of ecological psychology.

It's not necessarily, but it doesn't care about it. It's more just resting on those traditional assumptions. Can can you on that point go into a little bit more depth on the specifying versus non specifying That was something that you had talked about at SMSC that personally I saw had a lot of carry over to the hitting side of baseball. So would love for to hear a general overview of how you bucket those things, what goes into it for the audience.

So then if I if I use my PhD. As the example. The specifying information will be things like the bull flight, things that are lawfully like bound to action. So if you think about some of the more traditional work like Dave Lee's work in kind of steering when driving and looking at things that time to contact and the variable of Tao Tao describes that time to contact and it's an information.

Variable, which is kind of lawful in the sense that it specifies A relation between the observer and the environment, so we can perceive the rate of expansion of an object on the retina. Which is like a lawful way of of treating that information because it leads to specific behaviour. So in cricket. The the the flight of the ball towards the batter is very much a specifying source of information because it is kind

of it is leading to an action. Whereas a non specifying information source might be something like the broader like contextual environment around it. It might be the line of the run up of the bowler. It might be. The slight variations in their action within their hands. So in cricket, different kind of and similar. To baseball, right with different. Hand positions, finger positions can impart different trajectories in the ball. Different race of spin, different speed, it can make it

swing. All of those are more. Non specifying sources of information because they're not going to tell us directly. How to act? It's not going to necessarily allow me to intercept the ball in its path, but it's going to get me in a state of kind of action readiness. So the way that we're treating that in my PhD is that the use of non specifying information allows the individual to to keep open as many possible affordances as possible. It's like puts us into this like

state of action readiness. So it for for. For cricket batters, it brings them into the line of the ball, or it might inform. The of the. Variation of the ball which can be bowled. So cricket ball normally has a shinier side and a rougher side, just where the bowlers will try to protect one side of the ball so that it can be much smoother. And that's then going to. Create a bit of lateral. Movement in the swing of the ball and then slight variations in how that's how the seam that

runs through the middle. Of the ball. Variations in how that seam is positioned. Within the within the grip of the bowler. Can then kind of. Cause the hit to hit. The seam to hit the ground at slight different angles and it might start to like to to nip up towards them or be. A little bit flatter in the carry through or swing, more like. They're all like non specifying bits of information, those kind of grips on the ball. It's just informing the batter of a of a state of.

Action that might. Occur in the future. So it just brings them closer into line with potentially not another word expected, but like potentially expected outcomes. So as a bat, as a batter. I mean, I'm a terrible batter. I've done dreadful. This is why I do research in it rather than doing it. I know that if I'm if I'm facing a bowler at my local Cricket Club where the the wickets are normally quite they're not the best in the world.

They're normally quite soft. There's a bit of a hill so I know if I'm facing a bowler who's coming down the hill it's always cloudy where I am so it can be quite overcast. So I know that the likelihood is is that ball is going to swing away from me a little bit and I'll try and pick it in the bowlers hand and I'll try and. Pick for that their variations in in finger positions in the same position. I'm pretty poor at it, but I should.

Be able to. I'm going to start to think that this is probably going to swing away from me and swing away from the stumps. So chances are I'm going to be, I'm going to be playing lots of shots into the kind of into the offside, trying to pick those ones out over there. So I might bring myself kind of from. I might shuffle my feet a little bit more. I might move towards the line of the ball that I think it's going to be on, but it's not going to specifically 'cause me to do the

action of intercepting the ball. That comes much later on in that kind of the in the event when specifying information becomes available through the trajectory of the ball and like more lawful variables like time to contact come into play. So when you say something is non specifying it can still be relevant, but how do you also deal with like information that is not relevant? Because even to me, so when you describe Tau, Tau seems to me to be like a higher order variable,

right? Would that be a fair? OK. And so if that's if that's the case, that it's a a higher order variable, can there be other specifying information that's not that's like a lower order, you know? So for example, being able to pick up the hand position or the release point to me that is

specifying but it's not. It's not like you're saying like it doesn't have a lawful thing but if I can't pick up that point I won't be able to follow or I'll have to pick up the the trajectory of the ball further down its its flight path and that's if it if I am able to to to figure that out. And so to me there's there's something about you also need to be attuned and sensitive enough to be able to pick up where the release point is so that you can actually follow the the the the

ball flight. And so I guess that's where I'm kind of interested to know like how do these other variables that are, how do you delineate variables, variables that are like not even relevant at all. You could say crowd noise like that doesn't have that. If you're tuning to that or you're letting that affect you, that's that's completely non specifying. Whereas something like the the the bowlers run up that has that has information that's useful

but it's not. It doesn't have that lawfulness necessarily. But even still like I think it, it tells you when you going back to what you're talking about before action readiness, right, you have to start, it gives you information of when to start moving to put yourself in a position to to be able to actually respond to that later

information. So I guess is is that what you're meaning by action readiness is that you are acting in such a way to prepare yourself for the subsequent event or things that are about to unfold. Yeah, like non specifying doesn't necessarily mean like not informative, it's just not lawful.

So I think that's where ecological psychology I think treats information more clearly in the sense that like ecological psychology is is the study of ecological like relations and the study of information within that environment. So the the job of ecological psychology is to find the the lawful information variables which which are specifying of action and like we can perceive directly so we. Perceive things like Tau directly. It's like a. It's just an. It's a lawful information

variable. The the Point around crowd. Noise is an interesting one because like. We don't know that it's not informative, so most teams have a better home record and they do have an away record. And that's probably something to do with things like the crowd we saw in the UK, especially my main. Sport is football. As much as my research is in cricket, like my interest has always been football, soccer in

in this context. But during COVID when there was no crowds like the home and away kind of records kind of levelled out a little bit more. So the crowd I think might actually be part of skilled behaviour, the fact that we're able to deal with a crowd, whatever. So my PhD is is essentially around that point is how we couple the use of like specifying and non specifying information because there's so much of it and almost like the treatment of something like cricket.

Rather than it being like a series of discreet events, like all one ball 2, ball 3, it's just one continuous temporal event. Every ball corresponds to the the ball before it and the ball that comes after, because those events are so nested in our relations with the environment. So how I'm batting, how I'm perceiving, how I've attuned to the environment at the start of my innings might look very different to the middle and to the end.

And compared to when it's 10 in the morning to two in the afternoon to 4:30 in the late afternoon. Compared to if we've got, you know, runs on the board or we've lost loads of wickets or the weather's changing a little bit or like all those different information sources can start. They're non specified, but they can still be informative. They are still like shaping our relations with the environment and that essentially that state of action readiness.

Is it be used or more more skilled individuals will use that non specifying information IE like pre ball release kinematics might use it more successfully and it might do a better job of bringing them in line with the ball like the ball moves way too fast for us to rely solely on. That trajectory information alone. So we have to do something which brings us in line or closer in line to to in in that batting performance.

So as you'll see most like individuals will start triggering that movement, particularly goalkeepers. In my Masters work the goalkeepers are often moving before the ball has been struck, so obviously that kind of non specifying information is causing some behaviours to change. It's maybe not the most informed decision because it's not relying necessarily on like ball trajectory information, but it's but it's still something which is allowing us to anticipate the future state of that event.

So with batting in particular like that, anticipation come from things like the run up information we know about the bowler, we might know that the bowler likes to bowl certain variations at certain times in the innings and that kind of stuff. And it's just brings me into this state of action readiness, which is where I'm just trying to keep the landscape of performances as open as possible or as kind of solicited as possible towards the kind of expected outcome of those events.

Just helping the batter keep in line with future events and that almost that kind of like allowing them to access more specifying information sources through the use of non specifying information obviously by bringing them into that state of action readiness so they're more able to then make use of the affordances further down the line of that event. Are there many other specifying sources of information other

than you could say like towel? Yeah there's there's matter into them all over the shop there is. I'm going to get the names from of these as well. There's there's a lot done in flyable catching. Particularly by Claire Michaels in like the 80s, I think around like perceiving like vertical optical acceleration or something like that. That's not exact, that's not the exact term.

I'm sure there there are other variables, but I guess the the difficulty in these variables is in accessing them as well as like the maths behind them is is crazy half the time. There was some. Some work a while, not too, but ten years ago I think around affordance based control and how we make use of affordances in line with kind of knowledge of our own action capabilities and our own effectivities and how kind of lawful information can be used in respect to those

effectivities. And so there's bits and pieces out there, but that I guess that's more specifically the role of ecological psychology is around understanding those information variables compared to ecological dynamics, which I guess is more geared towards certainly more towards sport based contexts in particular. And it's probably more an applied theoretical framework to understand those interactions in the sporting context, so probably less less worried.

About the different information variables used and more worried about. Kind of the the broader context around affordance use in sport. And you talked a little bit about you know the non specificity of crowd control and whatnot. So I want to go to a football example and talk about how for Liverpool's home games they the crowd does you'll never walk alone to sing.

And so and I know in in other sports like in baseball in the States, the common thing that coaches will tell minor leaguers is never looked up because the crowd size is never above, you know two decks high at most and then when you look up you know the the bright light. So in terms of, you know, ecological psychology, how can that something like that where maybe there is a notorious home field advantage or there's a notorious place you're going to that's well known?

How does that affect? You know someone's, you know, performance in terms of ecological psychology. Yeah, I'm not sure it's necessarily even an ecological psychology perspective on it. It's just kind of the the more traditional stuff on arousal and kind of state anxiety and stuff and the biological effects that that can be had on the performer

as well. And the kind of increase in heart rate and like that stuff is affecting that broader complex system that humans are and kind of that's going to change the relations we have with the environment and it I don't ultimately I don't know the exact relations that crowd's going to change on how we perceive stuff. There's there's likely I think a broad and neurobiological response we have to to stresses and that's going to affect how

we then pick up information. I think as a fair hypothesis we can lean on, which I think underpins kind of ecological psychology and particularly the biological relations that that inform our interactions and kind of a a broader complex system that we are and are linked. To as well. I wanted to loop back just a little bit.

Can you kind of explain what is direct perception you know because you you brought up you know that we can't necessarily maybe track the ball the whole way if it's going super fast because it's moving faster than our eyes can can, can follow and then you know how does direct perception differ or maybe how does it does it can it be coincided with this you know

information processing. You know how long it takes, you know the information to go travel from the eye to the brain and then from the brain to the spinal cord. Like how how do you view this stuff? And then also like how is how does direct perception play into

all this. So direct perceptions like I'd probably say is like the strict starting point of any kind of ecological approach to perception and that kind of stems from Gibson's really early work and direct perception is is literally the how we perceive the environment directly. There's no need for any kind of mediating or kind of broader mental gymnastics or kind of inferential processes within the brain to kind of process that sense that sensory data into

something more meaningful. Gibson's whole argument was that the world out there is meaningful in itself. Like the the the environment that we're surrounded by, like has meaning within it. So like as we are walking in a straight line down a path, information kind of like the visual scene rushes past us. And that perception of optic flow is what specifies motion and that is supposedly or is argued is a direct information variable which we pick up on.

So we are surrounded by this optic array, just that light reflecting off of all number of surfaces and that can specify kind of depth and occluded surfaces. So as I'm sat here now I've got a lamp on in the corner and like that projects that light into the room and it creates a very littered kind of optic array. And I've got like a chair there and the end of the sofa there, the door there. And I can now pick up all the different objects or bits of

furniture within the room. That's the optic array which I'm trying to perceive. And as I move I kind of the visual scene will will always change and it's the relation I have for that environment which is important the direct perception therefore there specifies that the information out there which is causing me to act, we are kind of innately sensitive to in the sense that it's it is lawfully specifying

of action. So my behaviour is controlled by the perception of kind of very real material information sources which I attune to or calibrate to which informs our perception. So there was there was loads of work done on looming objects in babies, and how babies can respond to how objects loom towards them. There's some wicked work for him. I think it's like 1981 from I. Think. It was Bootsma and Savilsberg and someone else.

I can't remember their life for me, but they they literally examined kind of whether we are sensitive to objects kind of looming towards us, kind of growing and like the rate of expansion. And they got like a mechanical arm and a lot of balls which flew towards the face of the the perceiver and they had to kind of kind of grabbed the ball as it came towards them on this mechanical arm.

And they kind of measured like the grip aperture, so like the held of the aperture in the hand and they sent one ball down which was like a large size ball and it stayed large the whole time. They did one with a smaller ball which stayed small the whole time and they did one with with a ball that deflated as it went down to see whether we are actually sensitive to the rate of change in an object relative to kind of as it's moving towards us.

So we can actually perceive rate of expansion and it kind of was evidence that like the aperture, the aperture in the hand changed relative to the deflating ball as it came towards them. So they argue that we are sensitive to that kind of that information source. It's a lawful lawfully specifying source of information which is a has a consequence of of action. Whereas more traditional theories in psychology lean really heavily on representation, so like more forms of indirect perception.

The world is just like a collection of lights which kind of comes into the retina and it's just meaningless sense data which we need to make sense of. And there has to be some process in the brain which knits and stitches that picture together to make it therefore meaningful for the person perceiving it.

And I think a lot of it stems from like the fact that the the, the reflection within the eye of light comes backwards and therefore like the brain has to do something to like flip the image as well and the brain has to do something to stop it being a collection of still images like a like an old school like movie tape. So there has to be a process in the brain which is doing that stuff. And that's where information processing kind of and that

stemmed from. And now more towards like active inference and more contemporary representational theories have come from in the sense that I think most people have like disregarded information processing. Now I think even kind of most hardline cognitivists are now pre accepting that that's that's not really a thing and it's we're more towards kind of active inference and predictive processing and mesh control or kind of the frisht and brigade

about the four E kind of stuff. But the difference is still based around the use of representations within cognition, perception and action. And ecological psychology is still really hard line with the fact that no representation is needed because we are directly sensitive to information out there. Whereas there is still that kind of band of cognitivists who are still committed to the fact that perception can't be direct, there has to be a mediating factor within the brain

somewhere. So I think this area types nicely that I forgot Part 2 of the question. It's all right. I mean, it happens. It's also late in my my brain works like that as well. I I think because part of part of why I want to get on this direct perception element and trying to understand the mechanics a little bit because I think that's where a lot of people struggle is like, OK, you say this word, but how does it actually work? How does it guide action?

Because I'm going to slightly veer off here. So somebody had tweeted this out and I'm kind of, I kind of want to get your thoughts on it and how it relates to either cricket or baseball because they're talking about this for for baseball. They quoted somebody perception is biased by things you have seen before. Richard Mass Massland. To me that makes sense. But how this person interpreted it, they they followed up with saying calibrate internal pitch models of your hitters.

And so I think ecologically if we go we're not, we're not. Yes our perception is biased by the things that we have seen before. I think that that that I think I can accept that, but I don't know it's about like calibrating my internal pitch model. So I guess how how would you, how would you, like understand that or what would you, how would you respond to a coach who who wants to increase a who thinks that perception is about updating internal models and

representations of the world. You know, because it it very much feels like we're looking at the same data set, but we're interpreting it in some ways, two different, slightly two different ways, but like you know, you end up in very divergent ways of what you end up doing in training, if that's what you're trying to do. So I'm kind of curious your your thoughts on how you, how you'd respond to that.

I mean the the, the new nihilist me, it'd be like, I just just let him crack on thinking like that. Because this stuff's like politics, right? Some people you know, No one changes political party particularly easily. Like. And it's similar with this stuff.

It's so deeply rooted in kind of how we view the world and like our internal epistemologies and ontologies that it feels like there's there's like a an attraction to a particular way of viewing the world and that aligns with ecological or or cognitivist stuff. That's the. But to give an actual answer, there's a little bit that's just

so rooted in language. So they're using the the, the thought of a generative model of that pitch which we're trying to build and therefore the athlete can the stronger that model is, the better able that model is to be able to be adapted to different circumstances within the pitch. Like it, it makes like logically kind of it, it sounds good. I guess the ecological version of that would be around attunement to the information which is available.

So one of the issues we have issues that's pretty wrong word. But in cricket in particular, there's a use of lots of bowling machines. So kind of big mechanical structures. You put the balls in the top, set the set the speed and set the direction. And I think some of them you can impart swing and spin on it as well and you fire balls down to the batter and and there is some like very tangible stuff there, right. You're perceiving an object in flight like it's just pretty

similar to batting in a game. But this is where kind of that broader use of I think and particularly in my PhD the the marriage of sensory and non sensory information, the the the marriage of kind of non specifying with specifying information. I think that perception is naturally using all of those forms of information every day. Like we're walking around the the the general world and we're always kind of using those bits of information.

It's always part of our kind of visual and cognitive processes. So within cricket we use lots of bowling machines that have very little additional information beyond the trajectory of the ball. And and you you could argue the trajectory of the ball isn't quite right as well because you don't get that same kind of natural ball path that you get from bowlers and that kind of stuff.

But, and the way that bowling machines are used is that you'll give lots of consistent feeds at particular, you know, particular length on a particular line and you'll just kind of groove the technique of the batter and you'll help them get really affected at making that shot, essentially to create a generative model in the brain. Whereas the argument on the flip side of that or an ecological approach would be you're you're just exposing them to kind of increasing levels of sensitivity

to that information. And you're allowing them to explore the affordance landscape if you want to use that term or just explore the kind of the visual information that's available to them and to be able to pick up what is specified to inform their actions. So if we face the bowling machine really often, we get quite good at facing the bowling machine because we've learnt the dynamics of that task. I we've learnt the information layout, the information

structure. We've kind of become very sensitive to that particular optic array. Like I'm quite good against the bowling machine, I'm I'm a pretty good batter. If you set it up on a pretty consistent length and line, I can get myself in a good bit of flow, whereas an ecological version that would be you just learn task dynamics. We get very good at tasks that we learn, and transfer between tasks is actually quite difficult because we we learn the information layout of

particular settings. So take away the bowling machine. You've got Nat. You're facing natural bowlers with all the other bits of information around it, which is essentially one of the PhD studies I'm doing, is facing bowlers just going through random deliveries, just whatever, bowlers with a more pattern sequence and bowlers with a set field, a context, a score, a scenario, and like increasing the levels of other information that might sit around that.

And that for me is what's what we should be. How we should be supporting athletes is to make them as effective as possible as picking out of what is useful or selecting the information which is most soliciting and kind of is going to allow them to exploit the affordances that are available within the environment. And I think that's what we've got to get athletes to, is that they've got to make really complex decisions under a lot of pressure with a load of different bits of information

all over the place. Like the actual event of the delivery in baseball and cricket is such a minute amount of time. There's got to be more to it around that which is supporting action. Like how how much are we exposing athletes to sequences in delivery? How much are we exposing them to? Like. So in in cricket, you receive an over, so you receive 6 balls from the same bowler. How often are we like actually exposing our batters to a bowler

bowling 6 deliveries? Are we allowing them to kind of explore that, that bowler in a sequence and pick up on the bits of information which might support their action or might inform different parts? I've. Veered off quite significantly I think, but I have to bring it back around to kind of the building of generative models is that so? So we teach a module, Oxford bricks where I we used a coaching module around kind of creating practice designs and we joint deliver it.

So every week there's a broad theme and I deliver it from like an ecological angle and the other lecturer delivers it from a more cognitive angle angle, particularly around predictive predictive processing. So we have our different use of terms things like he's saying our we're building generative

models here. I'm saying well actually just we're supporting them and you know exploiting a landscape of affordances and attuning to XY and Z and we explain all these different things from our two different perspectives. But reality of is it most of our coaching looks quite similar. We both use, you know. Pretty similar looking environments. We'd like to keep things to be relatively representative of the performance environment.

We're not a big fan of blocked, repetitive, repetitive practice. You know, we must think athletes making decisions is a pretty good thing. Our coaching was really similar. Our views of the world and our theoretical frameworks are very, very different. But ultimately it's it gets us to the the same kind of place on the pitch itself. For. Different reasons, and they're always going to be bits of Revere off away from each other

practically as well. But it's got me to this kind of point, which is why I don't really do Twitter anymore of like, do we need to worry that much about understanding the the mechanics and the intricacies of different theoretical perspectives as coaches and instead like just sharing some of the good principles and good practices that are available to

us in Within Coaching? I don't know what the answer is to that, but I think it's worth exploring because I have spent the past ultimately 10 years studying this stuff in a fair amount of depth and as part of my job. And even I've like barely scratched the surface and I've probably got a pretty good grasp on it. But I don't know everything and I don't know all the different bits. And you know, my mathematics isn't that strong and my theory isn't the best in the world.

And like, so like I've spent all this time studying it and I don't really know it. So is there any, like any coach, kind of whose job is to be a coach, How much, how much of this are they going to understand as well? That's the kind of debate I've wrestled with lately. So as long as we can share in the good parts of us put like respective theories and like we're making informed decisions because we've kind of got grasp with some stuff maybe that's

quite effective. I don't know I'm kind of rambling a little bit but the thought got in my head. No, I mean because the the longer that I've been in this I guess you could say and then also practically trying to apply it with other coaches that don't aren't familiar with these concepts. The the the concept I play with is this this idea of dexterity and adaptability.

So if I understand and too like mastery if you understand a concept well enough you should be able to apply it across any different context that you find yourself in. And to me if I'm just going from an ecological dynamics perspective, well you know if I understand constraints and the constraint LED approach and I understand how to manipulate constraints it doesn't matter the situation. If I can understand the problem that we're trying to solve, then I can apply an ecological approach.

Even if the other person is applying, you know, a blocked cognitiveness approach, I can still help athletes regardless or just figure out how to navigate. And so to me, you know, to your point, you know, I'm, I'm getting that way too of like, yeah, a lot of times the the environments that we put are putting our athletes in are very similar. But at times though, because I think if we're all doing the same environments, what is

giving us an edge? Because I do think that's you know trying to understand from an athletic performance standpoint what is giving us an edge over our opponents or what is going to help us better attuned to what our athletes

need. And I think that's where the where this stuff like really matters of like why why should you care is trying to figure out like how do we get more performance out of our athletes and and so that's at least my initial thought of of kind of what you're talking about is like OK yes there's there is that whole element of people are not going to understand it feels very religious.

But at the same point I do think if we wrestle with the questions not necessarily trying to persuade the other person but be able to answer it because a lot of times we we we just take it for granted. You know like these ideas and these concepts like of course it's direct perception but like the the person who is resistant they help us understand our position deeper to be able to articulate it better.

And so at least for me that's that's kind of I've approached it because it similarly to you I've I've been thinking about like you know interactions on on social media of well why am I why am I posting this you know why am I specifically trying to win an argument. But I also think there's something to of like being able to articulate better your

position. So I, you know, without necessarily crapping on everybody else, like I think that's a an important thing because then that like it just doesn't become super productive. But there is, there's another thing that I wanted to kind of loop back into of you're talking about pitching machines and that's that's ubiquitous in

baseball as well. One person that I've been interacting with on social media who I appreciated has helped me understand some things the way that he views it and he is. He wrote an article on Tao and all this sort of stuff, but he views it very much. In this I want to say more mechanical sense of like it's all just about time. Time to contact is the only thing that matters.

And I'm like, but it it doesn't like because for him he's like, well, I just need to use a pitching machine because Tao is the only thing that matters. So what's the difference? It's it's all the same. And in my head I'm like, I don't have a good response because even part of what you're just saying, you know, like, well, if Tao is the specifying information in the ball, is the specifying information in the ball flight, why, why wouldn't I just use a pitching machine?

So I guess for what would you say to the person who sees it that way, I to me it makes sense why you would see it that way. All the things that we've been saying so far mostly sound like it affirms that, but what is the nuance that we're missing here?

I think it's the assumption that the event starts when the ball is released and almost the ignorance to the fact that there is 20 seconds prior to ball release where loads of stuff is happening, right even like down to the point of like my knowledge of base was pretty limited, right? But the fact of someone trying to steal a base and that delaying the whole process of the the the pitch coming in like that, that's all part of it. Like that's all part.

This is one of the things that really frustrated me within skill acquisition. Research is the just the treatment of all these different events as isolated things and that are taken away. The fact that they're all so connected to each other. It's a logical argument that you know if all of it matters is Tau, then yes use pitching

machines. But then we're asking people to perceive from complete static like nothingness to then all of a sudden a ball flies us. So then you bring the fact that well, reaction time isn't very much a thing because you know, smooth pursue tracking doesn't happen as easily as that. So the first little, the first few milliseconds are redundant because we just don't see the ball fire out of the hole that

quickly. So we've now lost part of the event to to to nothing and then with the individuals, the batter is moving late. There was Ross Pinder's work in 2000 and nine 2010 that looks at kind of movement kinematics when facing a bowler machine versus a live bowler.

And we did something similar with visual search research in a project at Oxford Bricks. But essentially like the movement kinematics occur much later the the bat lift is much less when facing a bowler machine because you're the whole response to the event itself comes much later.

If you're facing a bowler, you can pick the ball very early on and you can kind of smooth pursuit that the smooth, smooth pursuit track the ball for a much longer period of the event because you know what, like you can see the ball, the ball's

within your visual field. The second use of bowling machine, that ball is occluded and if you occlude the ball and it's out of the visual field, then all of a sudden when it suddenly appears, it doesn't appear where we need it to appear because we'd like, because if you'd start to bring in other aspects to it. So that's the bit that gets me, is that batting isn't just relying on things like time to contact because they like train the things you do.

Like if you're facing bowlers, train against bowlers. Now there is an argument for it, like I shared an office with an SNC coach from my PhD and we had this row. And like he he doesn't have the overs to spend or the pitches to spend in his bowlers in a week's training programme. If he gets to like Thursday. And his bowlers have spent their 20 overs for the week and they've they've already spent eighteen of them and he's got two overs left in their tolerance for the next four days.

Like he's not letting them bowl in the Nets that day. So maybe we won't have to use the batting machine and that's OK. I guess it's it's how do we, how do we encourage the bowler machine to become more representative and have more bits of kind of non specifying information and more context attached to it and more of the purpose behind it. So if we're using the Bowler machine because we can't use bowlers because we haven't got any, well, ideal world, could we kind of replicate some of the

older, more traditional visual research studies and could we get like a a big white projector screen in front of it and where the ball gets released from, Can we cut out a hole in the screen there? And can we project videos of a bowler running in so when they release the ball from their hand, it's actually the video ends with the release of the hand up here and that's where the ball comes out of. Then you might get something more real and might feel more

like the game. Can we have fielding positions in place? Can we have a scenario? Can we add things which gives it a bit more gain or or kind of performance relevant information to support the use of that around the back of the Bowler machine? Because sometimes bowler machines are inevitable. Sometimes we can't escape them in the winter. If a batter wants to kind of bat against a bottle machine because there's no bowlers around, like, that's fine, absolutely fine.

Like, why not batting batting against something rather than batting against nothing is probably still going to help us. I guess it's where you know when we want to add value. If we're thinking about skill development specifically, then maybe we might have to make the decisions to to incorporate more reliable elements. If our purpose is on skill development, let's get rid of the bowling machine.

And if our purpose is on, you know, I've got a batter that's really out of form and they, you know, So case in point, for the first, the second set in my PhD, we we added increasing bits of contextual information, so the first condition may just batted like a normal net session. So bowl is just running, Bowl random deliveries. They're not really particularly thoughtful, They're just bowling them.

Random sequence of bowlers like the gaps, like I'm pretty sure you just stood in the Nets just batting things away for ages in that, you know, batters are pretty comfortable. If you get out, you get out. Like there's no real consequence to it. You just kind of get reset for the next delivery, which could be a spinner, it could be a same

bowler, it could be anything. Whereas when we started to add kind of context and pressure to it and we said well now you're facing the same bowler for a full over and you've also got to score, you've got to score 15 runs within the over.

Like lot like batters really struggled and their their batting mechanics got very rushed and very Hanford and they're chatting to him after and it's like it's quite speculative but they're saying they felt more, they felt so stressed and they started having to have chase a scoreboard. So they were timing shots much, much earlier because they were chasing after the ball a little bit. So all these bits of contextual information around it play such

an important factor. So if our purpose is skill development, we've got to bring that stuff in. And that's where I'd say, well then we've got to move bowling machines out because, all right, yes, you get the ball trajectory and you get your time to contact stuff, but that's not batting.

Batting is making use of all the different forms of replacement that exist, all the stuff in the build up, the fact that where's the weather changes, pitch to pitch, innings to innings, like all those different things that are part of the batting experience. And you know, the magic of the ecological approaches is meant to be an embodied account of perception, the fact that it it takes Organism in its

environment. And if we're going to appreciate that complexity in those relations, we've got to ensure that those relations are nested within any kind of training environment we try to create. To that point when when you're talking about finding ways to to infuse a little bit of say that more representativeness or non specifying information into those practices are is there kind of like a rank order that you set up on things that you find most valuable on.

My mind goes to what's a minimum effective mix of OK, we have a pitching machine do the constraint of being inside. What are the the two to three variables that we want to add to this to be able to make it more effective for the development of skill? I mean there's there's no hierarchy of stuff. It's just try stuff and see what works. Like sometimes, like space issues and time issues can dictate a lot of this stuff. So, like, I'm not really a cricket coach.

A lot of this stuff just kind of comes from my understanding of like constraints and thinking, oh, how I can design stuff. So we used I I think the key one that we always use is, is fielding locations. And if that can be kind of replicated through like abstract objects, so there's a visual

thing they can see. So in the Nets you've got like the actual Nets that run alongside and it might be like taping some a four sheets of paper at various points along the next to indicate there's a fielder within that line. Or it might be that we just kind of we get a whiteboard. We put the field down on the whiteboard and say to the battle, this is the field and we're going to change it after.

You know if we feel like we were changing a game as a bowler, we're going to change it. We'll tell you we've changed and you can come see the board again and you can work out where your

gaps are. Think that's the important thing for me because too often like batters go through the motions and their next sessions just like just picking balls off and slapping shots and you know they're middling it off the middle of the bat and it sounds good and but you've got no idea if they've not just middled it down like someone's throat who just lovely lovely catch. So give it some purpose and make them have to. I. Think it's been really important that batting is more

intentional. I think that's the the the word that I guess I put into a practice on is like, is what we're doing intentional here? So I've got a battle, let's say. I'll take me as an example. Anything which is not kind of going way wide of my wickets, I'm done. Crap. I can't. I can't hit save my life. Anything coming anywhere near my stamps like I'm guaranteed to get out.

So for me, in my next sessions, I'd make sure that I set the bowler up to bowl lots of straight ones and say, you know, that this batter, IE me, gets out very often to straight ones towards his stumps. So the batters think the bowlers ain't got an intention, the bowlers got an intention for how they're going to bowl. So straight away we've we've replicated some kind of performance environment.

Then we might set up a field which deliberately prevents me from being able to play the shots I like. So if it's coming straight down at me I I might try and come across the line and play off my legs and try and flick it around the corner. So what I'll do is I might make sure there's a, you know, third man is up and I might just try and play a slightly more heavy field on the leg side just to stop me from being able to play those shots.

Because I know that I can keep doing it, but it's going to keep going to field. There's not only any runs for it. So I have to play straight, I have to play into the covers. So that's going to therefore encourage me and like expose me to that more often. So I'm going to have to try and play those shots and if I'm having to play those shots, I'm having to experience those shots

and that's only going to learn. That leads to, I'd argue like more learning because I'm, I'm being exposed to the thing that I'm bad at. I'm having to bat very intentionally because without the field positions, I just keep playing the same shot and just nick it off the legs and think, oh, I've done one, I've done a nice one there, oh lovely. When like in actual fact I just stuck it to another fielder.

So I think making sure that like the the, the wave of the bowlers, the batters, the pitchers, whatever, we're recording them, that their behaviours are really intentional because their behaviours are going to be really intentional when it comes to the game in four days time. So if training can therefore be, and obviously there's other stuff, like if we're no game day -1, I'm probably not going to want overly burdensome practice designs with loads of decisions

that are quite tiring. Like there's some nuance to this and this and like there's some like clever programming and just good coaching stuff. I'm not going to want to stress the life. Out of my batters the day. Before a game. So it might be if we if we're playing Saturday, on the Friday, I might get the bowling machine out because it's nice and easy. They get in their groove, they can just go knock a few balls around, feel good.

Because I know that on Wednesday, Thursday they're they're facing environments that are really intentional and creating a bit of stress and a bit of anxiety and feels a bit more like the game itself. And that's where my learning's taking place. And Friday, maybe it's more about maintenance and making sure they're feeling good, ready

for the game the next day. So I think sometimes and I've I've been really guilt with this as well, is forgetting that there's more to there's more to skill, more to coaching than just the skill acquisition bit. There is like a person on the end of all of this who has kind of thoughts and feelings.

And as much as you know as coaches sometimes we wish they didn't and they were just robots who did the things we want them to do. Like it's not the case and I think skill development is super holistic and I think that's where we get value from the ecological approach. Well, and that was kind of where to me. If you truly appreciate ecological dynamics and the constraint LED approach, you have to consider the person and their psychological state in some ways.

But not not. Yeah, I think psychological state is the right way to put it. But I think that then plays into what you were talking about in your research currently of skilled intentionality.

I think we because our intentions might shift as we're interacting with things and you know going back to talking about you applied you know more context to the practice environment all of a sudden their behavior changed and so that shifted their intentions I think to me like so this is where I'm curious what how do you how would you defined define skilled intentionality what is what is kind of the abstract view of of this theory or this this concept.

And then and then I kind of want to play with play with it a little bit but at least I think we need to start there and not assume that I that my understanding is correct. I want to or you know just have people assuming and then potentially us being wrong like on specifying information. Yeah, I mean I I don't have a textbook definition of skilled intentionality handy, but like I only really initially I wasn't a massive fan of the skilled intentionality stuff.

But like I've like I've I've got proper excited with the last couple of years if it could just if it suited the data it suited

my project so nicely. But I guess skilled intentionality is like the the skilled use of that landscape of affordances like and if if we view affordances and our relations to them and actually view affordances as existing within relations, and if we we view that as being really nested and occurring over lots of different time scales and not necessarily just being the thing in front of me that I perceive.

So right now the the example that that got used quite a lot was like, I can't directly perceive like the can of beer in my fridge. I can't see it, but I know it's there. And I also know that like the need like for me to like quench thirst, IE the affordance is is the beer can in the fridge. But I can't. I can't see it, but I can still perceive the fact that it exists and it has value to me and that it affords me the possibility to

drink. The skilled intentionality asks you answers those more representation hungry questions like the answers, the questions like where we are having to do some thinking about objects which are not currently in front of us. Like, I'm sat in my living room, I'm not in my kitchen, I can't even see the fridge, but I know the fridge is there. I know that if I open the fridge there is a can of beer. So how do those kind of more

bigger meta problems get solved? And skilled intentionality essentially aims to answer those questions, the fact that how does an individual skillfully navigate that landscape of affordances and that kind of satisfy the relations we have with the environment. So in a cricket context it would be very much like the, you know, in cricket you could bat for the

entire game. So unless you get out or you declare, you could find yourself batting for like an entire 8 hour day and you being the person out there, keep facing the balls or your partner at the other end. So I I really liked the use of skill and intentionality in that sense and the fact that it can it can be a nice framework to address the real temporal nature of batting, the fact that it this happens over a really long time.

So the work that I presented the other month with Sean Tyler was looking at. So we we interviewed with like a video stimulated interview. So we got the highlights from the game they played two days before, sat down with each batter and like just reflected and chatted about different events and different moments within the highlights. So some of the batters innings lasted like 2 hours, 3 hours. Some of the batters like lost their wicket after like 3

deliveries. So the interviews are really different in length and therefore their reflection's really different. And one of the batters was like, oh, I like I think she was like I think of nothing. Like, there's nothing going through my head when I'm batting. I'm just singing a Boy's own song. And like, like her entire innings, like she's quite a young player, score like 50 or 60 or something. But it was like, actually like, I have no, I have no recollection of anything.

She was like, I was just singing a song. I was like, because I don't know if I wasn't singing a song and then I've been really frantic. But then other players were like really thoughtful, Like I remember this ball, I thought she was going to swing it away, but then it knit back in on me and I had to get down to it late and had to play on the back for, like I said, really detailed answers.

And it just made me think that like the levels of intentionality, the different ways these batters are using information, like there's something really unique and individual in all of this and essentially I think corresponds with the use of like a a landscape of affordances, The fact that some batters are more skilled at doing that, some batters have found a way to be skilled at using less of those

affordances. So I think standing back to that use of like more kind of sensory and non sensory information. Some batters were very aware of the non sensory stuff like the scout reports, the scoreboard, all those things that kind of are information in all of themselves but not necessarily specifying in any way. Some batters were really aware of that and that was quite an integral part of their shot

selection. Whereas some batters were like yeah no I didn't like I didn't even look at the score like I just I was just thinking I was enough for lunch. Like it's like so all these different variations and it it fitted really nicely with the the quiet eye work we published a couple of years ago. And the fact that when you when you stop generalizing participant data to a mean score you actually just start to see these real unique variations in performance. So both within individuals and

like between individuals. So you know a group of four, each one of those four had slightly different like quiet eye profiles IE how they perceived the the kind of the key critical bit of information like differed quite quite quite vastly. But then also within those individuals themselves there was variation from trial to trial. So this for me just corresponds with that.

But I'm just like an unlock an additional level on this like intentionality level, the fact that intentions might be the thing that shapes perception of different events. The the hard bit is going to be how that how do I actually evidence that because you know we can't conclusively say like we can't see direct direct perception. Like if you'd forgive the irony of it, like we can't see a representation. We can see a series of like neural networks and firing neurons.

And we've some people who assumed that means that's a representation and some people who assumed that's just resonance, like we can't see this stuff, that's the difficulty. But I think, yeah, that's kind of skilled intentionality. I tried to explain, you brought up a couple of different things that I wanted to touch on. I wanted to go at least to stay on intentionality, but I do want

to touch on resonance. So to me intentionality is like a lens by which like you filter what information you're going to either pick up or how you aim to interact with that information. And so I feel like because right when you change the task dynamics, you apply, you know you, you put in fielders and then you give a consequence potentially or you give them a goal of scoring 15 runs. All of a sudden now the way that

you aim to interact changes. But I think there's something to the notion of being skillful in in picking out or deciding on or what your intention is, right? So like a more skilled batter is able to pick the an an intention that is going to match what they need to do. A less skilled batter may pick a different intention that is not going to functionally fit with

the task. And so I because to me when I'm thinking about from a practice design standpoint the reason that why I want these potentially more difficult scenarios or that have different bits or slices of the game is so that they can begin to attune to what type of intentions are most

successful. You know because they can also become hyper focused on things that are you could say not specifying And so and that's where I I the whole your whole definition of specifying information is just kind of like in some ways like blow my mind a little bit because now how do you delineate in my mind like there's there's information that's valuable versus information that is like it it it is in the word of like contextual interference.

Like it's it interferes with with you being able to connect. And I think there's a difference between to me how I was defining specifying information was only was it just had to be relevant. It was something that is useful for the task versus a lawful

thing. So that I'm curious at least on that point like is there a way to delineate things that are non specifying and non useful is that how you would have to term it or you know specifying and or non specifying and useful like that's that's where I guess on a side tangent, I mean that's kind

of curious. Now there's some nice stuff from a guy called Ollie Brunswick whose whose work is it's actually based in on the predictive processing stuff, but looks at like when like contextual information is incongruent with the actual actions. So it was in cricket and when the field positions don't align to the type of ball that's been bowled. So in in in cricket you'll deliver, you'll bowl certain types of balls based on your field positions because that's

more likely to get them out. But often times like wickets have like bars have lost their wicket to a delivery which they weren't expecting because they might have waited too much of their focus on the context with maced around the field and may have kind of pre empted a kind of delivery And then at that point when it hasn't come. So potentially like there is there is the point of information becoming or or or stopping being as useful as it could be.

I guess it's based on like the weighting of that of how that information is used which I think is what comes back to the fact that you know if we're going to train in training environments we've got to make sure this stuff is available to the batters to be able to search through and search for to find out what is going to be supportive action in terms of delineating what's useful and what's not.

It's just really difficult and and I don't think we know like like we can't know for certain that you know what they do in their run up is for good or for evil. In the same way that like. So kinematics are talked about a lot in the visual search research, particularly around like when we're perceiving someone throwing a projectile. But then a lot of the cricketers we spoke to in the stimulated recall in interviews paid very little attention to what the

bowler was doing kinematically. So there there is this disconnect in kind of how people use information that there is some you know just because we put eye trackers on someone and that their their retinas are are moving towards different parts of the body. Does that mean their intention or their attention is actually placed there And it's more of a question thrown up in the air more than anything like making a point on anything but I don't think we know.

It's basically the point I'm trying to make and that we are trying to generate an idea of this stuff. But for one batter something might be useful, for another batter it might not be. I think that's the the the the point of the skilled intentionality is that.

That the. Purpose of it in the bowler sense in those kind of intentions is to keep as many potential affordances open as until as late as possible so that selection can come much later, IE through using non specifying information in the the in the the bowlers gather and run up. I'm positioning myself to make use of as many different affordances as possible for when more specifying information is available.

I can then select the appropriate or select is the wrong word there, but I can make a more effective action to intercept the ball and kind of put it into a certain area. I guess the other thing I would I wanted to explore is you know the the the one, the one gal who she just had a song kind of going in her head. To me this is this I think plays a little bit towards the the question of resonance.

What I got from ecological dynamics is this sense that our system will use information and coordinate based upon that information. We might not even be consciously aware of it. So for example, you know how previous like that. To that quote, you know how previous events will bias us towards the the next, the the

coming events. Well, if I am singing a song and I'm not letting that information overly, I don't get overly fixated on on on it, but rather I let because right in some ways we're really good at picking up patterns and it becomes intuitive, right. We intuit the pattern before we can fully articulate the the thing that we're seeing sometimes And so I guess we're where I'm going is, is how much does it matter except for like kind of you know trying to

puzzle it out later. You know what what a person is is necessarily saying because like in that in that example like because This is why. For example when I hear hear a player talk about like, so let's go Some of the research that I've looked at with gaze behavior and hitters is that some hitters or like novice hitters will look at parts of the body that expert hitters tend not to.

Right. Like if you're still looking at the chat or the like the the lead arm or whatever, when the hand starts to come out, OK, maybe you're not looking in the right area. But if you are successful and you're looking at an area that doesn't seem to make sense, that tells me that like oh, maybe you're using the periphery, you're better at picking out periphery information and utilizing it that way versus looking directly and having like

your focal point being there. And so I think that's that's kind of to me my understanding of like part of what we're trying to do with direct perception is open the system up to being to be able to fully connect with the information there and not cloud it with with something else and like hone in on information that's not useful.

And I'm curious on this because Rob, Rob Gray talked about this of you know when we use a batting or a a pitching machine we can become attuned to non specifying information or we can develop a a relationship with it that doesn't actually translate to to the to the the the game context with with an actual

pitcher. So how do you how do you look at that as far as like is it are they attuning to non specifying information when they're when they're hitting off of a bowling machine and that's why it's not transferring. But if we're talking about like towel being there they're still the the same specifying information. So I guess what? What is it? Do you have a different way of explaining that than how Rob was

talking about it? Without knowing the context that Rob was talking about it in, I'm not sure I'd. I'd be a brave man to go up against Rob anyway. He is the He's the authority in this. Space. Yeah. I wouldn't want to go up. Yeah. I wouldn't know the context which Rob was talking about because in my like the bubble trajectory itself is is an information variable that is specifying some kind of action.

The non specifying stuff in terms of the fact that it's a bowling machine and that there is no run up and that there's no you can't perceive the release point in that sense. The fact that that kind of non specifying information isn't there and therefore you're picking up on non specifying information in the sense of the machine itself.

And so in cricket when you use the bowling machine, the person like operating the machine will hold the ball in their hand, put their arm directly up in the air and then feed the machine. So in that sense, like if they're attuning to that action as a trigger for the ball is about to be released like that's that's maybe attuning to a non specifying information source which will not transfer effectively.

So in that sense, if there's a similar mechanism within a baseball pitching machine, in the sense that if they are like if they are picking up on information from the person operating the machine or in the sense that there is a a lag time or a delay time between ball to ball. If it's like an auto firing machine picking up of that information which probably isn't conducive to performance even, it translates into the actual, the game itself.

I guess my last kind of question is what are your what are your thoughts on resonance? You know, when it comes to how we become attuned to things like because to me it's all about the pickup of information and then you know and then to me, you don't necessarily need to be able to fully articulate it because to me resonance and attunement like allow for more of an an embodied, sort of like direct. Interaction with with the with the information.

But I don't I don't know really know like the the full mechanisms of it just other than like you become sensitive to the information you're able to pick it up faster. You'll be able to like, I don't know, again, kind of like a radio wave, right. Like it's, it's matching pitch in terms of like tone or frequency. And so that's that's where I see like the the difference between like information processing, you know, versus attunement and

resonance like that. That to me seems to be a more, I don't know, direct or analogue way of interacting with the world. Yeah. I mean the resonance stuff comes from like the metaphor of that Gibson used of like a radio transmitter and the fact that it is like resonating to the signals that then generate like the the the the the noise essentially. But I I've, I've really struggled with that resonance metaphor because because go and go for it.

Oh, well, because when I looked into the concept of resonance, right, like things have, you know, for example, metal has a frequency that it resonates at and what would it when you look at like, well, what does that mean? It means that for for the input in, it actually will like double or something right, Like so for the same amount of input you're

actually getting more. And so I almost wonder if like you know, when something resonates with you, all of a sudden you it gives you more energy, you connect with it, you're drawn towards it. And so I to me that's kind of how I understand the concept of resonance or attunement. Like you, you are drawn towards this thing and so like for example, to become more attuned and sensitive to the information that's going to help you most functionally execute the task.

That's kind of like to me the whole purpose of practice is like when you become these, these things become more intuitive like just in the way of that with a somebody who has mastered something, things become really simple, right? Like all this, you know, the things that would bog down a

novice. It's like well based upon the the constraints of the situation, I'm able to hone in very simply you know to me on these on this kind of notion of like higher order variables, there's higher order things that kind of like prioritize and I understand what the priorities are and like I'm able to hone in very simply based upon these

like simple concepts. And so I don't know that's that's for me at least how I'm trying to or how I I view like attunement, resonance, like these things all of a sudden they they give you more energy they they draw you in to the thing And I think that's also related to affordances. You know, why do we accept some affordances versus other affordances. There's there's a post hoc explanation. I can see the logic in that.

I mean like resonance traditionally was around like the resonance between like the information and like the, the, the neural signals essentially like the, the essentially like the corresponding frequency of the information variables and how that is then picked up by the perceptual system. And then there's some stuff around like oscillating frequencies, which then goes a little bit beyond me.

But yeah, my, my PhD supervisor always asks me he's always like like what actually is achievement, like what is it? And like, it's always like a becomes like a metaphysical like debate about what achievement actually is. And I'm I'm still not convinced that I've provided a sound enough answer because I you end up falling back on other metaphors, like resonance for example.

Yeah, so resonance. I've always found it's a bit of a tricky sticking point in the theory, but as like a metaphor, it does nicely explain essentially the the the mechanics of their perception. In the sense that if there is no resonance between the frequency of the information variables and how we are picking them up, then there is going to be like a corresponding relation between myself and that information. So there's a metaphor, I like it in terms of mechanics.

I'm still trying to get my head around here. That's fair. I think that's a kind of a unless. AJ do you have anything or Robert do you have anything that you want to any other questions you want to ask before we we wrap it up? No, I don't got anything because I think the question I wanted to ask was regarding the residency you asked again. Yeah, I I have one more just to wrap us up.

It'll be quick, but what's one thing that you think batters should be doing more of that most currently aren't, that you've seen in your research? Batting, like actually just spend some time batting. That's a bit flippant. But I, I, I'm on like the peripheries of this stuff from just like seeing a few things on like social media and see a lot of time like batters like doing a doing a lot of stuff on like the shape of their like bat path.

And similar to golfers like spending so much time on their swing and forgetting that there's actually a ball they've got here at some point and that there's like another person like a fair few meters away who's trying to stop you from having that ideal back path and they're going to throw it to disrupt that back path. So why not spend some time making that back path more like or black.

I'm I'm using flipping terms but like why not spend more time developing like that dexterity and that adaptability and the ability to to really tightly couple perception and action. And you know, I've seen some cricketers with with lovely batting mechanics like they they look, they love, their shots look good, but anything which is outside of their wheelhouse, any delivery which has got like a little bit of shape to it and like they fall. Apart.

And some of the best batters I've seen have been that. Some of the most unconventional, ugliest batters. But they are ultimately you are because of batter. In any sport you are judged on your ability to make bat on bat on ball contacts consistently, cleanly and effectively. And if it looks like, if it look baggy, then it looks baggy like who's who's who's really caring when the the ball's like

clearing the boundary. Like see I just think like let's let's just allow batters to to spend a bit more time actually batting and and coupling perception action. Yeah, that. That's a great little quote to to wrap it up. It's if you want to get better at batting bat more. I guess on a, on a practical note then what are some ways to to do that?

Like for example, in my mind like, you know, you talked about because I mean you're talking about batters, but let's let's flip it, let's talk about like pitchers in bowlers, right. Like I don't know like would it not be just as efficacious for them to pitch to hitters more. And then if you because to me that's where the like where this practically goes is. Like I don't know if if a if you're working on hitting you need a pitcher present and vice versa.

Like you know if if a pitcher only has so much volume, you know that they can they can throw in a day a good portion of that if not all of it should be to a hitter like I don't to me that just makes sense and so because then you can kind of then supplement like you're saying with with a pitching

machine later. But I think that's that to me is the the ideal and I think more people should try to figure out that process because I think it's you know it's the same way of like if you're going to you know do martial arts or whatever like you can't really learn how to wrestle if you don't wrestle against somebody else like. So that's at least my my thought process there. I don't know Ben if you have any other thoughts on on on practically how to how to

logistically make that work. It's all just come back down to intentions really like the same thing. I'm I'm a pretty good bowler when it comes to bowling at the Nets and there's no batter involved like I'm I look I look half good because the the the when the intentions change and all of a sudden you're not just trying to like hit the wickets you're trying to navigate a person who's trying to smash the ball away that becomes a very different bowling becomes a very

different experience. And yeah, I think it's just run like setting those intentions. And whether that comes very literally in the design of our practice or maybe more like maybe more kind of subtly in instructions and interactions we have with the batters and bowlers. Like are we giving our our performers instructions within training that shapes their intentions?

Are we saying them to them like you know in training tomorrow and maybe I might ask my my batter to, you know when you're when you're in your in your in your batting group tomorrow, just just go after it just just try and score as big as you can. Are we like allowing them to kind of be shaped by those

different intentions. So when it comes down to it, like potentially we might be able to get those elements to transfer into the performance environment if they're more exposed to batting with that particular set of intentions. But but yeah, I think ultimately, you know Garrett, your points, your points there like bats and bowlers, get them set up together. What types of resources would you recommend to people? There doesn't even have to be

ecological dynamics or whatever. Just anything that you think would be good and helpful for people, resources. And then two, where can people find you if they want to connect with you? Only because it's a lot of what I'm reading at the moment, like anything by people like Oliver Randswick, Sean Miller, like those kind of guys. Just like just just wicked research that's not framed ecologically but just answering some like really, really good questions and where you can find me.

I am that. I'm on Twitter, but I'm not not on it a lot or not as much as I used to be and I can't remember what my hat is. I can't know. I don't think it's. It's like, well, let's see. I mean I can throw it in the. Arab. Comments here? It doesn't matter. Social media is overrated, right? See, it's Ben under score, Franks one. There we go. So, all right. Well, thanks for coming on. It's been a pleasure chatting with you. And until next time, everybody.