Predicting success in football.
Clinical interviews were held with the rated most successful starting players for each position on a college football team. Mental strategies associated with major sensory systems were determined for each player through observation of eye movement patterns and players' usage of sensory based words. Mental strategies for motivation, creativity, belief, learning, decision making, and memory were assessed through these observations. Both offensive and defensive winners have a high visual lead. The auditory sensory modality is LEAST utilized. Creativity and decision making are dominated by the visual sense. Mental strategies for motivation, belief, and memory are balanced between visual and kinesthetic sensory modalities. In future studies clinical observations suggestive of sensory based mental strategies can be combined with empirically validated personality test data to increase predictive power in the selection and placement process with college and professional football players. This should reduce costs of selection and placement errors caused by hitherto undetected psychological factors.
Daus
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Wilson
J
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Freeman
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WM
D003657:Decision Making; D005538:Football; D005544:Forecasting; D006801:Humans; D010552:Personality Assessment