Expertise differences in anticipatory judgements during a temporally and spatially occluded task

Abstract

There is contradictory evidence surrounding the role of critical cues in the successful anticipation of penalty kicks in soccer. In the current study, skilled and less-skilled soccer goalkeepers were required to anticipate when viewing penalty kicks that were both spatially (full body; hip region) and temporally (–160 ms, –80 ms before, foot–ball contact) occluded. The skilled group outperformed the less-skilled group in all conditions. Participants performed better in the full body condition when compared to hip region condition. Performance in the hip only condition was significantly better than chance for the skilled group across all occlusion conditions. However, the less-skilled group were no better than chance in the hip condition for the early occlusion points when predicting direction and height. Later temporal occlusion conditions were associated with increased performance both in the correct response and correct direction analyses, but not for correct height. These data suggest that postural information solely from the hip region may be used by skilled goalkeepers to make accurate predictions of penalty kick direction, however, information from other sources are needed in order to make predictions of height. Findings demonstrate how the importance of anticipation cues evolve over time, which has implications for the design of training programs to enhance perceptual-cognitive skill.

Height After Side: Goalkeepers Detect the Vertical Direction of Association-Football Penalty Kicks From the Ball Trajectory

“…In addition, in our study the trunk orientation did not predict the height of the penalty kicks. These results are to a large extent consistent with previous findings (Savelsbergh et al, 2002;Causer et al, 2017).…”

“…Such high correlations are in line with the high reliability of perceptual variables for the horizontal direction that has been observed in other studies (Franks and Harvey, 1997;Diaz et al, 2012). The results of the present study therefore provide evidence for the common claim that the biomechanical predictors are more subtle for height than for the horizontal direction, and are hence most probably more difficult to detect and use (Savelsbergh et al, 2002;Causer et al, 2017).…”

“…In addition to the horizontal direction, the height of penalty kicks is relevant in the sense that it exerts a strong influence on their outcome (Bar-Eli and Azar, 2009). The percentage of correct anticipation from the biomechanics of the penalty taker is substantially lower for the vertical than for the horizontal direction (McMorris et al, 1993;Savelsbergh et al, 2005;Murgia et al, 2014;Causer et al, 2017). In addition, the improvement with learning is less for the vertical direction (cf.…”

Goalkeeping in the soccer penalty kick

“…However, the evidence regarding information use is equivocal; information from the angle of the runup, the hips, the nonkicking and kicking foot/leg have all been claimed to explicate the advantage of the skilled penalty stopper. This state of affairs has led some to argue that the information may be distributed across different body parts, and that more sophisticated methods of manipulation of video footage are required to delineate the information that skilled penalty stoppers use (see e. g., Causer et al, 2017;Diaz et al, 2012). In contrast, we argue that the incongruent findings highlight the shortcomings of the use of video tasks for examining goalkeeping.…”

“…In order to examine how goalkeepers adapt to the extreme time constraints, experimental studies have tended to examine goalkeeping expertise in penalty kicking using video technology (e. g., Causer, Smeeton, & Williams, 2017;Diaz et al, 2012;Franks & Harvey, 1997;Loffing & Hagemann, 2015;Neumaier, te Poel, & Standtke, 1987;Savelsbergh, Williams, Ward, & van der Kamp, 2002;Savelsbergh, van der Kamp, Williams, & Ward, 2005;Williams & Burwitz, 1993). During video tasks, goalkeepers are required to respond to footage of players taking a penalty kick.…”