Shared Representations in Athletes: Segmenting Action Sequences From Taekwondo Reveals Implicit Agreement

Abstract

How do athletes represent actions from their sport? How are these representations structured and which knowledge is shared among experts in the same discipline? To address these questions, the event segmentation task was used. Experts in Taekwondo and novices indicated how they would subjectively split videos of Taekwondo form sequences into meaningful units. In previous research, this procedure was shown to unveil the structure of internal action representations and to be affected by sensorimotor knowledge. Without specific instructions on the grain size of segmentation, experts tended to integrate over longer episodes which resulted in a lower number of single units. Moreover, in accordance with studies in figure-skating and basketball, we expected higher agreement among experts on where to place segmentation marks, i.e., boundaries. In line with this hypothesis, significantly more overlap of boundaries was found within the expert group as compared to the control group. This was observed even though the interindividual differences in the selected grain size were huge and expertise had no systematic influence here. The absence of obvious goals or objects to structure Taekwondo forms underlines the importance of shared expert knowledge. Further, experts might have benefited from sensorimotor skills which allowed to simulate the observed actions more precisely. Both aspects may explain stronger agreement among experts even in unfamiliar Taekwondo forms. These interpretations are descriptively supported by the participants’ statements about features which guided segmentation and by an overlap of the group’s agreed boundaries with those of an experienced referee. The study shows that action segmentation can be used to provide insights into structure and content of action representations specific to experts. The mechanisms underlying shared knowledge among Taekwondoists and among experts in general are discussed on the background of current theoretic frameworks.

Unveiling cognitive aspects and accuracy of diagnostic judgments in physical education teachers assessing different tasks in gymnastics

“…When observing movements, it has been shown that event boundaries relate to salient kinematic features (Zacks et al, 2009;Newberry et al, 2021). Event segmentation even works for movements characterized by rapid kinematic changes like tasks in gymnastics (Bläsing, 2015;Newberry et al, 2021;Stadler et al, 2021), in contrast to eye-tracking where short fixations of the eyes with a rapidly changing visual scene is difficult to track (Mack, 2020). Therefore, and according to the theoretical grounding about the relevance of kinematic features for decision making in gymnastics, event segmentation was used in the current study.…”

“…As mentioned, a disadvantage of test outcomes as reference is that for many tasks in PE no tests exist. An alternative approach, therefore, is to utilize trainers who hold a sufficient level of judgment accuracy with regard to the studied task as reference (Bläsing, 2015;Mack, 2020;Newberry et al, 2021;Stadler et al, 2021).…”

Preprint_Diagnostic judgments_physical education_Leukel et al_

“…The cognitive structuring of exercises in terms of movement phases and characteristics can be assessed using event segmentation (Kurby & Zacks, 2008;Zacks & Swallow, 2007). In research related to sport science, event segmentation has so far been repeatedly applied in studies focussing on cognitive aspects of movement expertise (Bläsing, 2015;Newberry et al, 2021;Stadler et al, 2021). Event segmentation is generally concerned with the idea of how people automatically compartmentalise experience into temporally defined units.…”

“…As mentioned, a disadvantage of test outcomes as reference is that for many exercises in physical education, no tests exist. An alternative approach, therefore, is to utilise trainers who hold a sufficiently high level of judgment accuracy with regard to the studied exercise as reference (Bläsing, 2015;Mack, 2020;Newberry et al, 2021;Stadler et al, 2021).…”