When watching a sports competition, it is common
to hear television announcers use the term ‘high (sports)
IQ.’ One aspect of this IQ is an athlete’s ability to anticipate
the actions of others during competition. Sport psychology
research has shown that the ability to recognize
and extrapolate task-relevant information from the competition
context (i.e., cue utilization) is a cognitive skill
in which expert performers have an advantage as compared
to less-skilled athletes (Mu¨ller & Abernathy,
2012). The development of cue utilization as a cognitive
skill comes from extensive periods of exposure to highly
complex situations associated with the athlete’s practice
and/or competition environment (Ericsson & Lehmann,
1996). During these times of exposure, athletes begin to
associate optimal responses to situations; done through a
storming process in which multiple associations are
tested and then discarded and/or revised based on the
ultimate outcome (Wiggins, 2012). Evidence for expert
performers increased ability to utilize cues primarily
stems from research conducted using a temporal occlusion
paradigm (Williams & Ward, 2007). While much
research on cue utilization has focused on the use of
visual information, researchers have begun to examine
the way in which athletes also use tactile and auditory
information. Findings have revealed that feedback from
multiple senses is used in the anticipation and control of
complex motor actions (e.g., a baseball swing), implying
that these actions and the planning of these actions
should no longer be investigated solely from a visual
perspective (Gray, 2009).
