Guidelines for reporting action simulation studies (GRASS): Proposals to improve reporting of research in motor imagery and action observation.

Researchers from multiple disciplines have studied the simulation of actions through motor imagery, action observation, or their combination. Procedures used in these studies vary considerably between research groups, and no standardized approach to reporting experimental protocols has been proposed. This has led to under-reporting of critical details, impairing the assessment, replication, synthesis, and potential clinical translation of effects. We provide an overview of issues related to the reporting of information in action simulation studies, and discuss the benefits of standardized reporting. We propose a series of checklists that identify key details of research protocols to include when reporting action simulation studies. Each checklist comprises A) essential methodological details, B) essential details that are relevant to a specific mode of action simulation, and C) further points that may be useful on a case-by-case basis. We anticipate that the use of these guidelines will improve the understanding, reproduction, and synthesis of studies using action simulation, and enhance the translation of research using motor imagery and action observation to applied and clinical settings.

Illuminating sex differences in mental rotation using pupillometry.

We use pupillometry to measure sex differences in mental rotation (MR) and to investigate the contentious claim that it is a unique spatial ability marked by male advantage in performance. Across two MR tasks - using Shepard-Metzler style cube figures and images of human hands - we measure reaction time (RT) and sensitivity, d', and supplement these behavioural data with a physiological metric of 'cognitive effort', pupil diameter. Differences in RT and in d' between the sexes are slight for the cubes task, while females are consistently faster than males on the hands task. In contrast, pupillometry reveals striking a sex difference, with males showing significantly lower pupil dilation during the cubes task, suggesting less cognitive effort for comparable behavioural performance. This difference is attenuated during the MR of hands, in line with recent findings that sex differences in spatial abilities dissipate when elements of social perspective taking are introduced. Taxonomy: Attention, Perception.

Metacognition and action: a new pathway to understanding social and cognitive aspects of expertise in sport.

For over a century, psychologists have investigated the mental processes of expert performers - people who display exceptional knowledge and/or skills in specific fields of human achievement. Since the 1960s, expertise researchers have made considerable progress in understanding the cognitive and neural mechanisms that underlie such exceptional performance. Whereas the first modern studies of expertise were conducted in relatively formal knowledge domains such as chess, more recent investigations have explored elite performance in dynamic perceptual-motor activities such as sport. Unfortunately, although these studies have led to the identification of certain domain-free generalizations about expert-novice differences, they shed little light on an important issue: namely, experts' metacognitive activities or their insights into, and regulation of, their own mental processes. In an effort to rectify this oversight, the present paper argues that metacognitive processes and inferences play an important if neglected role in expertise. In particular, we suggest that metacognition (including such processes as "meta-attention," "meta-imagery" and "meta-memory," as well as social aspects of this construct) provides a window on the genesis of expert performance. Following a critique of the standard empirical approach to expertise, we explore some research on "metacognition" and "metacognitive inference" among experts in sport. After that, we provide a brief evaluation of the relationship between psychological skills training and metacognition and comment on the measurement of metacognitive processes. Finally, we summarize our conclusions and outline some potentially new directions for research on metacognition in action.