title: Discriminating talent-identified junior Australian football players using a video decision-making task.
abstract: This study examined if a video decision-making task could discriminate talent-identified junior Australian football players from their non-talent-identified counterparts. Participants were recruited from the 2013 under 18 (U18) West Australian Football League competition and classified into two groups: talent-identified (State U18 Academy representatives; n = 25; 17.8 ± 0.5 years) and non-talent-identified (non-State U18 Academy selection; n = 25; 17.3 ± 0.6 years). Participants completed a video decision-making task consisting of 26 clips sourced from the Australian Football League game-day footage, recording responses on a sheet provided. A score of "1" was given for correct and "0" for incorrect responses, with the participants total score used as the criterion value. One-way analysis of variance tested the main effect of "status" on the task criterion, whilst a bootstrapped receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve assessed the discriminant ability of the task. An area under the curve (AUC) of 1 (100%) represented perfect discrimination. Between-group differences were evident (P < 0.05) and the ROC curve was maximised with a score of 15.5/26 (60%) (AUC = 89.0%), correctly classifying 92% and 76% of the talent-identified and non-talent-identified participants, respectively. Future research should investigate the mechanisms leading to the superior decision-making observed in the talent-identified group.
authors.affiliation: a School of Exercise and Health Sciences , Edith Cowan University , Joondalup , Western Australia , Australia.
authors.forename: Carl T
authors.initials: CT
authors.lastname: Woods
authors.affiliation: a School of Exercise and Health Sciences , Edith Cowan University , Joondalup , Western Australia , Australia.
authors.forename: Annette J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Raynor
authors.affiliation: b School of Medical Sciences , Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University , Melbourne , Australia.
authors.forename: Lyndell
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Bruce
authors.affiliation: a School of Exercise and Health Sciences , Edith Cowan University , Joondalup , Western Australia , Australia.
authors.forename: Zane
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: McDonald
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001076:Aptitude; D054874:Athletic Performance / Q000502:physiology; D001315:Australia; D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D011594:Psychometrics; D012372:ROC Curve; D012916:Soccer / Q000502:physiology*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014741:Video Recording
keywords: discriminant analysis; expert performance; talent identification; team sports