Expertise differences in anticipatory judgements during a temporally and spatially occluded task.
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.
Liverpool John Moores University, Research Institute for Sport and Exercise Sciences, Tom Reilly Building, Liverpool, United Kingdom.
Joe
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8939-8769
J
Causer
University of Brighton, Centre for Sport and Exercise Science and Medicine, Welkin Laboratories, Eastbourne, Brighton, United Kingdom.
Nicholas J
NJ
Smeeton
The University of Utah, Department of Health, Kinesiology, and Recreation, College of Health, Salt Lake City, UT, United States of America.
A Mark
AM
Williams
D000328:Adult; D059031:Anticipation, Psychological; D056352:Athletes / Q000523:psychology; D003463:Cues; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D011361:Professional Competence; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D012916:Soccer / Q000523:psychology; D055815:Young Adult