Breadth and Depth of Knowledge in Expert versus Novice Athletes [Sutton & McIlwain] (original) (raw)
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A prominent topic is whether visual or motor expertise makes greater contribution to expert visual anticipation in sport. This stems from psychological theories, such as common coding theory, which predicts perception and action can inform each other in a bidirectional manner. This paper reviews the literature that has investigated visual and motor expertise contributions to expert visual anticipation in sport. First, psychological theories are discussed that predict visual and motor contributions to perceptual-motor behaviour. Second, classifications of motor skills and studies are presented to evaluate the literature reviewed. Third, literature is reviewed with reference to performance, learning, and transfer of visual anticipation, which are all vital for successful sports performance. The review aims to stimulate thought about mechanisms underpinning visual and motor expertise relative to performance, learning, and transfer of anticipation skill, which can better guide the practitioner to improve skill.
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In various domains, experts are found to possess elaborate domain-specific representations they developed over years. In this study, we provide the first systematic attempt to characterise the short- term representations among individuals with different expertise levels. We showed videos of soccer game plays to expert, near-expert and non-expert soccer players and asked them to describe the actions taking place. Verbalisations were coded based on Fischer’s Skill Theory. Monte Carlo permutation tests revealed that players with higher expertise constructed representations of higher complexity (regardless of their specific content). Taking the content of the representations into account, we found that higher expertise soccer players relatively more often included high complexity levels of actions not including the ball and (moving) players on the field. These findings improve our understanding of perceptual-cognitive expertise by demonstrating how actors with different levels of expertise integrate the information they perceive to construct their representations in real time.
Indian Journal of Applied Research, 2011
Various studies on cognitive expertise have developed a new approach to describing the superiority of experts on novices as a benefit of directory knowledge acquired at the heart of practice. This study had as its main objective to confirm the superiority of cognitive performance sports experts. Indeed, the interaction of conceptual knowledge (treatment level) and perceptual knowledge (low-level processing) optimizes performance through a rapid recall and recognition memory knowledge among experts. It does not reach this performance was achieved in the novices. The results confirm that a large repertoire of knowledge acquired through practice facilitates the response to the demands of sporting tasks.
Frontiers in psychology, 2014
For over a century, psychologists have investigated the mental processes of expert performers - people who display exceptional knowledge and/or skills in specific fields of human achievement. Since the 1960s, expertise researchers have made considerable progress in understanding the cognitive and neural mechanisms that underlie such exceptional performance. Whereas the first modern studies of expertise were conducted in relatively formal knowledge domains such as chess, more recent investigations have explored elite performance in dynamic perceptual-motor activities such as sport. Unfortunately, although these studies have led to the identification of certain domain-free generalizations about expert-novice differences, they shed little light on an important issue: namely, experts' metacognitive activities or their insights into, and regulation of, their own mental processes. In an effort to rectify this oversight, the present paper argues that metacognitive processes and inferen...
Frontline Learning Research, 2017
The expert performance approach, initially proposed by Ericsson and Smith (1991), is reviewed as a systematic framework for the study of 'expert' learning. The need to develop representative tasks to capture learning is discussed, as is the need to employ process-tracing measures during acquisition to examine what actually changes during learning. We recommend the use of realistic retention and transfer tests to infer what has been learned, so that the effects of various interventions on learning may be evaluated. A focus on individual differences in learning within groups of expert performers is considered as a way to identify the characteristics of more efficient and effective learners. The identification and study of expert (or good) learners will enhance our understanding of skill acquisition and how this may be promoted using instructional interventions and practice opportunities. Although these ideas are predicated on our research on perceptual-cognitive expertise in sport, we argue that they have general merit beyond this domain. The challenge for scientists is to generate new knowledge that helps those involved in developing learners who can acquire and refine skills more efficiently and effectively across professional domains.
Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 2015
Objectives: Three main goals were addressed in this research. First, we tested the claims of two cognitive mechanisms that have been proposed to explain expert performance. This was done during assessment and intervention phases of decision making. Second, we tested the validity of an online test of perceptual-cognitive skill in soccer: The Online Assessment of Strategic Skill In Soccer (OASSIS). Third, we compared the OASSIS to other predictors of skill in soccer. Design: Over the course of a three-part experiment, participants completed an updated version of the option-generation paradigm employed by Ward, Ericsson, and Williams (2013), the OASSIS, and a battery of other cognitive tests. Performance on these tests was used to inform theory and validate the OASSIS as an applied tool for domain professionals. Methods: NCAA Division 1 and recreational-level soccer players completed a battery of tests, both using paper/pencil (see and online. Results: Support for Long Term Working Memory theory (LTWM; see was observed during both phases of decision making, though the prescriptions of the Take-The-First heuristic (see tend to hold, particularly within intervention phase. When used to predict skill-group membership, the OASSIS accounted for more variance than domain-general tests of cognition. Furthermore, scores on the OASSIS correlated with other measures of perceptual-cognitive skill in soccer and the process-level predictions made by LTWM. Conclusions: Updates to our theoretical understanding of expert performance are provided and the validity of the OASSIS is demonstrated.
Central European Journal of Sport Sciences and Medicine, 2021
This study examined the effectiveness of implicit and explicit learning methods on the acquisition and retention of the decision-making skill in low and high complexity situations. 60 novice students were divided into explicit, implicit, and control group. Experimental groups followed 12 training courses. A pre-test, a post-test, and a retention test were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the instructional methods. All participants were evaluated in decision-making speed and accuracy in laboratory tests under simulated conditions. A three-way factorial ANOVA was conducted (3 Group X 2 Complexity X 3 Measurement periods) with repeated measurements on the last factor for the accuracy and reaction time. The analysis showed a significant improvement in decision-making accuracy, in low complexity for both experimental groups. In high complexity situations, the explicit method improved over time and was better than the implicit for decision accuracy. No differences were found among groups or measurements for the decision speed in either low or high complexity situations. It seems that in complex sport conditions, the use of explicit learning helps novices to develop decision-making accuracy more than the implicit learning method, since guided discovery may guide the participants to process contextual information from the sports environment more effectively.