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We examined skill-based differences in the detection and utilization of contextual information over a period of increasing exposure to an opponent's action preferences in soccer. Moreover, we investigated the ability of athletes to adapt to changes in these action preferences over time. In an initial detection phase, the attacking opponent demonstrated a proclivity to either pass or dribble, with these preferences being reversed in a subsequent adaptation phase of the same length. Skilled soccer players showed superior anticipation accuracy across both phases compared with less-skilled counterparts. The skilled participants significantly enhanced their performance over both phases, despite a significant drop in performance immediately following the change in opponent action preferences. In contrast, the less-skilled group only improved over the detection phase. Gaze data revealed that the skilled participants fixated more on kinematically relevant areas, compared with the less-skilled group, and increased the time spent fixating the player "off the ball" following greater volumes of exposure. Our novel findings elaborate on how skilled performers use both action preferences and motion information to anticipate an opponent's impending actions in sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expert performance across a range of domains is underpinned by superior perceptual-cognitive skills. Over the last five decades, researchers have provided evidence that experts can identify and interpret opponent kinematics more effectively than their less experienced counterparts. More recently, researchers have demonstrated that experts also use non-kinematic information, in this paper termed contextual priors, to inform their predictive judgments. While the body of literature in this area continues to grow exponentially, researchers have yet to develop an overarching theoretical framework that can predict and explain anticipatory behaviour and provide empirically testable hypotheses to guide future work. In this paper, we propose that researchers interested in anticipation in sport could adopt a Bayesian model for probabilistic inference as an overarching framework. We argue that athletes employ Bayesian reliability-based strategies in order to integrate contextual priors with evolving kinematic information during anticipation. We offer an insight into Bayesian theory and demonstrate how contemporary literature in sport psychology fits within this framework. We hope that the paper encourages researchers to engage with the Bayesian literature in order to provide greater insight into expert athletes' assimilation of various sources of information when anticipating the actions of others in complex and dynamic environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the interaction between explicit contextual priors and kinematic information during anticipation in soccer. We employed a video-based anticipation task where skilled soccer players had to predict the direction of the imminent actions of an attacking opponent in possession of the ball. The players performed the task both with and without explicit contextual priors pertaining to the opponent's action tendencies. The strength of the opponent's action tendencies was altered in order to manipulate the reliability of contextual priors (low vs. high). Moreover, the reliability of kinematic information (low vs. high) was manipulated using the temporal occlusion paradigm. The explicit provision of contextual priors biased anticipation towards the most likely direction, given the opponent's action tendencies, and resulted in enhanced performance. This effect was greater under conditions where the reliability of kinematic information was low rather than high. When the reliability of kinematic information was high, the players used explicit contextual priors of high, but not low, reliability to inform their judgements. Findings suggest that athletes employ reliability-based strategies when integrating contextual priors with kinematic information during anticipation. The impact of explicit contextual priors is dependent on the reliability both of the priors and the evolving kinematic information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is proposed that experts are able to integrate prior contextual knowledge with emergent visual information to make complex predictive judgments about the world around them, often under heightened levels of uncertainty and extreme time constraints. However, limited knowledge exists about the impact of anxiety on the use of such contextual priors when forming our decisions. We provide a novel insight into the combined impact of contextual priors and anxiety on anticipation in soccer. Altogether, 12 expert soccer players were required to predict the actions of an oncoming opponent while viewing life-sized video simulations of 2-versus-2 defensive scenarios. Performance effectiveness and processing efficiency were measured under four conditions: no contextual priors (CP) about the action tendencies of the opponent and low anxiety (LA); no CP and high anxiety (HA); CP and LA; CP and HA. The provision of contextual priors did not affect processing efficiency, but it improved performance effectiveness on congruent trials. Anxiety negatively affected processing efficiency, but this did not affect the use of contextual priors or influence performance effectiveness. It appears that anxiety and prior contextual information impact attentional resources independent of each other. Findings are discussed with reference to current models of anticipation and anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although active exploration of environmental information is essential for specifying one’s action opportunities in team sports, knowledge about the relationship between visual exploratory behaviour and successful actions in ice hockey is scarce. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether scanning prior to pass reception was associated with a higher probability of a successful outcome of the following action among professional ice hockey players. A total of 43 male and 45 female ice hockey players participated in the study. Observations from 22 filmed ice hockey matches from the top Swedish male and female Hockey League (SHL and SDHL, respectively) were included in the study, generating a total of 2,545 actions that were included for analyses. In line with previous research on elite soccer players, the results showed that scanning before receiving a pass increased the probability of a successful subsequent action (β = 0.12, 95% CI = [0.07, 0.17]). Neither gender nor position moderated the relationship between scanning and the probability of a successful outcome. We suggest it is important to acknowledge the benefits of scanning within player education, while also providing concrete training methods so that players can develop their ability to scan before receiving the puck. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]