This study investigated the role the dyadic interaction variability plays in influencing decision making on passing in the sport of futsal. Participants were 40 male students (Mage = 13.6 years, SD = 0.7) from physical education classes of a Brazilian school. They were randomly divided into eight teams, which played four games of 24 minutes according to the rules of the under-14 category of the local Futsal Federation. From the games, a sample of 80 sequences of play involving passes were randomly selected, from the moment the ball carrier got possession of the ball until the moment he passed it. From the x and y coordinates of all outfield players’ displacement, variability of running correlation, cross-correlation, centroid , and interpersonal distance were calculated as measures of dyadic interaction. Results showed that the interaction of passer and receiver dyads were more variable than the remaining dyads. Moreover, it was verified that the passer dyad had the highest variability. The findings enabled us to conclude that, from the attackers’ point of view, variability played a positive role. In addition, it appeared that the passer sought to disrupt the interaction with his defender to perform a pass more than his teammates did to receive it. It appears that the skills of passing and receiving in the sport of futsal imply the ability to vary.

This study investigated the swimmer's decision-making process for turning, based on spatiotemporal informational variables. The men and women 50-metre front crawl and backstroke events were selected and analyzed using TACTO software. Participants included 120 adults of both genders aged between 20 and 70 years. The distance to the pool wall at which the swimmers initiated the turn was analyzed with regards to velocity and variability of previous displacement. These factors were split into four groups adopting, quartiles as the cut-off points. Results showed that for all conditions, the swimmers who showed a higher velocity and a lower variability of displacement decided to initiate the turn at a greater distance to the pool wall. Furthermore, the greater distance seemed to be associated with a more successful performance. These results suggest that swimmers should be attuned to spatiotemporal and spatial information in order to maximize their performance. Keywords: turn of swimming, spatiotemporal constraint, decision-making RESUMO Este estudo investigou a tomada de decisão de virar do nadador a partir de variáveis informativas espaciotemporais. Para este fim, provas de 50 metros dos nados crawl e costas para homens e mulheres foram selecionados de uma competição de natação, e analisadas através do software Tacto. Os participantes foram 120 adultos de ambos os sexos com idades entre 20 e 70 anos. As distâncias da parede da piscina em que os nadadores iniciaram a viragem foram analisadas em relação à velocidade e à variabilidade de deslocamento, as quais foram divididas em quatro grupos adotando-se quartis como os pontos de corte. Os resultados mostraram que para todas as condições, os nadadores que apresentaram maior velocidade e menor variabilidade de deslocamento decidiram iniciar a viragem a uma distância maior da parede da piscina, e vice-versa. Além disso, a maior distância pareceu estar relacionada ao desempenho bem-sucedido. Estes resultados sugerem que os nadadores devem estar em sintonia com a informação espaciotemporal e espacial a fim de maximizar o seu desempenho. Palavras-chave: viragens em natação, restrição espaciotemporal, tomada de decisão Manuscript

This study investigated what are the verbal cues provided in futsal contexts of teaching-learning, training, and official matches, and what are their attentional foci. A cue refers is a short instruction that constrains the students/athletes to direct their attention to critical elements for successful performance. 1543 instructional cues were collected from Physical Education (PE) classes, futsal training sessions and futsal matches of an official championship. Data were analysed based on content analysis method and categorized through the Systematic Analysis of Pedagogical Content Interventions. Inferential analyses were run by the Trend Module (Trend Analysis and Multiple Comparisons) of PEPI software. The results showed that the category offensive technique (passing) was the one with the highest number of instructions in the classes, training and matches. It was also observed that rules and violations were similar between curricular classes and futsal training sessions. The findings allowed to verify (i) the primary cues physical education teachers and coaches provided, (ii) about which critical aspects they referred to and (iii) their specificity regarding the context specificity (classes, training and matches). The findings provide useful insights into the design of instructional tasks as the instructional cues allow students/athletes to gain knowledge about the learning task and to direct their attention to critical elements for successful performance.