Emerging technologies for performance enhancement, Cathy is a Professor at the School of Psychology, Queen’s University Belfast. Having obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh, she went on to take up a post-doc at the Sports Science Faculty, Marseille, France. It was here that she first encountered virtual reality. In a project funded by Adidas she was the first person to use this technology to simulate and understand the perception of curved free-kicks in soccer. Since joining QUB in 2005, she has built an immersive interactive VR lab where she is continuing to use this technology to study decision making in sport.

Keynote abstract

Virtual Reality Technology: How can it help us understand decision making in sport?

Virtual reality provides the perfect adjunct to study perception/action and decision making in sport. It is in essence a sophisticated interactive and immersive human-computer interface where a sensory environment (visual, haptic and/or acoustic) is simulated by a computer and is controlled by the interactive behaviour of the user. It is a versatile methodological tool that gives the experimenter complete control over complex environmental conditions and allows for an in-depth analysis of the user’s behaviour.

Held, September 2011.