I am interested in how individual’s function in stressful situations and what are the psychological and physiological changes that can either facilitate or debilitate motor performance. In line with this notion, I am involved with projects dealing in primarily visual attention, arousal and attentional bias. The goal of this focus is to examine cognitive function in information rich environments, and to understand motor outcomes. This research also involves making expert and novice comparisons to better understand how changes in motor skill are developed, and involves the use of eye movement measurement, EMG, EEG, and ECG psychophysiological measures to examine these differences. These comparisons can be formulated in dynamic situations such as a driving simulator or in more static, self-paced situations such as target shooting. This line of research is applicable to not only the sport realm, but also to many real world situations such as decision making in adverse conditions by pilots. A secondary research interest includes evaluating human movement patterns in their natural environment using kinematic, kinetic and electrophysiological data in which the concern is how motor performance is maintained or improved and how disruptions in motor performance can be diminished for both normal and special populations.
