Perceiving Patterns of Play in Dynamic Sport Tasks: Investigating the Essential Information Underlying Skilled Performance

Abstract

The perceptual-cognitive information used to support pattern-recognition skill in soccer was examined. In experiment 1, skilled players were quicker and more accurate than less-skilled players at recognising familiar and unfamiliar soccer action sequences presented on film. In experiment 2, these action sequences were converted into point-light displays, with superficial display features removed and the positions of players and the relational information between them made more salient. Skilled players were more accurate than less-skilled players in recognising sequences presented in point-light form, implying that each pattern of play can be defined by the unique relations between players. In experiment 3, various offensive and defensive players were occluded for the duration of each trial in an attempt to identify the most important sources of information underpinning successful performance. A decrease in response accuracy was observed under occluded compared with non-occluded conditions and the expertise effect was no longer observed. The relational information between certain key players, team-mates and their defensive counterparts may provide the essential information for effective pattern-recognition skill in soccer. Structural feature analysis, temporal phase relations, and knowledge-based information are effectively integrated to facilitate pattern recognition in dynamic sport tasks.

Visual span and change detection in soccer: An expertise study

“…There is indeed evidence to argue that skilled players seem to pick up and use rather subtle cues to read and recall the stucture of play situations. First, Williams, Hodges, North, and Barton (2006) showed that it is rather specific relational information between certain key players that provide crucial information for superior recognition in soccer. Second, several studies provide evidence for the superiority of experts in picking up, for example, subtle kinematic cues when attempting to recognise and anticipate the outcome of an opponents action (e.g., Abernethy & Zawi, 2008;Huys et al, 2009;).…”

Difference in declarative tactical knowledge between U-11 and U-15 soccer players

“…the increase of knowledge helps players better understand the game, its rules, roles of different positions, defensive and offensive strategies, and the competence to properly apply the tactical principles of the game [11][12][13]. these increments of declarative tactical knowledge prove to be relevant mainly in the first years, a period in which acquired knowledge has a fundamental role in the players' decision-making skills [14,15] and can be developed faster than procedural tactical knowledge [16,17]. One way to increase the level of declarative tactical knowledge is to experience specific training of the given sport [18].…”

The dark side of visual awareness in sport: Inattentional blindness in a real-world basketball task

“…According to this, one might argue that, since the test material utilized by Memmert and Furley (2007) was designed for adolescents (simple game situation, in which the last frame was visible for 3 sec), it did not demand enough attentional resources from adults, since Williams and Ford noted that increased experience of game situations leads to perceptual-cognitive adaptations in team ball players. These perceptual-cognitive advantages in team ball sports are most likely due to the following: pattern recognition (Tenenbaum, Levy-Kolker, Sade, Liebermann, & Lidor, 1996;Williams, Hodges, North, & Barton, 2006), which is the ability to detect meaningful patterns of play early in their development; superior visual search behaviors, such as fixation duration, number of fixations, and the proportion of time spent fixating specific areas of the display (for a review, see Vaeyens, Lenoir, Williams, information should actually get processed preferentially. Therefore, it is often not possible for a player to consider all the possibilities in complex situations, which means that he or she might consider only the most likely ones or the ones that his or her attention has been deliberately directed to by the instructions of a coach, such as in specific offensive game strategies.…”