4 The information-processing approach to skills

The information-processing approach in psychology refers to the study of cognitive processes by analogy with the computer. Since computers were developed in the 1950s, psychologists have found it useful to look at human mental processes as if they were the operations of a computer. The first psychologist to apply the information-processing approach to skill acquisition was A. Welford. Like a computer operation, a human skill is seen as having three stages: the input of information (perception), throughput (decision making) and output (response). The information-processing approach, as exemplified by A. Welford’s model, is useful to sport psychologists because it allows them to break down skills and skill acquisition to their component parts. Incoming information comes in several forms. Visual information is particularly important in open situations, in which one needs to be able to respond to what is going on around. In general, the more closed the skill, the less important visual information is. A bowler in cricket needs some visual information to bowl in the right direction, but he doesn’t need to be distracted by the crowd. Indeed, athletes who perform very closed routines, such as weightlifters, frequently report that they have little or no awareness of what is going on around them whilst performing. Another important source of incoming information comes from the sense of proprioception. This is important regardless of whether being practiced an open or a closed skill. Proprioception allows an athlete to sense his own position and movements. It becomes particularly important when an athlete has mastered a skill. As a skilled performer, an athlete can respond automatically to proprioception without making conscious decisions. The six senses are used to receive sensory information: sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch and proprioception. Information enters the information-processing system via all of these senses. To avoid being overloaded by this information, one has the ability to attend selectively to important information and filter out irrelevant material. Men generally attend to material that they are expecting to be particularly relevant to the situation and that which is particularly striking [5].

A. Welford conceived short-term memory not just as a store of information but also as the point in the information-processing system at which thinking and decision making occurs, using information from perceptual processes and long-term memory. Decision making occurs once the necessary information has been processed in short-term memory, and signals are sent to the muscles in order to effect the appropriate motor response. In this sense, A. Welford was ahead of his time, anticipating the modern understanding of short-term memory, as proposed in A. Baddeley’s working memory model.

The essential principle outlined by A. Welford, namely, that skills can be broken down to their components by comparing them to the workings of a computer, remains sound today. In general, the sequence of events outlined by A. Welford is confirmed by contemporary research. However, more recent research into information processing has revealed some issues not addressed by A. Welford’s approach. The issue of automatic processing, for example, is not satisfactorily explained. If a stimulus can be responded to without conscious attention, the model fails to explain at what point in the system it is filtered out from consciousness and what precisely happens to this information. Similarly, the A. Welford model does not address the factors that put limits on how much information an athlete can process at once and respond to with simultaneous actions.