Breadth and Depth of Knowledge in Expert Versus Novice Athletes

Abstract

Damian Farrow and Joe Baker (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Sports Expertise (Routledge). Knowledge and sport expertise Questions about knowledge in expert sport are not only of applied significance: they also take us to the heart of foundational and heavily-disputed issues in the cognitive sciences. To a first (rough and far from uncontroversial) approximation, we can think of expert 'knowledge' as whatever it is that grounds or is applied in (more or less) effective decision-making, especially when in a competitive situation a performer follows one course of action out of a range of possibilities. In these research areas, studies of motor expertise have for many years actively contributed to broader debates in philosophy and psychology (Abernethy, Burgess-Limerick, & Parks, 1994; Williams, Davids, & Williams, 1999). When we navigate the world flexibly and more or less successfully, how much is this due to a capacity to represent it? In considering alternative options, or planning future actions, we seem to transcend our present environment in some way: what is the balance or relation here between highly-tuned bodily dispositions and background knowledge of the world and its patterns? What changes in these regards as we gain experience and adapt to more complex and challenging environments? Is know-how fundamentally different in kind from ordinary factual knowledge of the world, or knowledge-that? And if expertise in a domain does involve or depend on

Exploring the Effectiveness of Immersive Video for Training Decision-Making Capability in Elite, Youth Basketball Players

“…In the expertise literature it is well established that elite decision-makers, while often indistinguishable from other performers on physical attributes, possess superior perceptual cognitive skills compared to their near-elite and novice counterparts ( Mann et al, 2007 ). Elite decision-makers have better pattern recognition and recall skills ( Gorman et al, 2012 ), anticipation ( Müller and Abernethy, 2012 ), different visual search strategies ( Klostermann et al, 2018 ), and knowledge structures ( Sutton and McIlwain, 2015 ) which underpin their superior decision-making capabilities. Given that these perceptual cognitive skills discriminate between elite, near-elite, and novice performers it could be assumed that these skills can be trained and this training would then transfer into improved on-field performance ( Abernethy and Wood, 2001 ).…”

Embodied Experience in the Cognitive Ecologies of Skilled Performance

“…Likewise, recent research in sport deploys thought sampling and verbal protocol analysis, in iterative, mutually informing interaction with behavioural methods. McPherson and colleagues fi nd signifi cant diff erences between the immediately retrospective reports given by experts and novices across sports, in the breadth, depth, and diversity of detailed tactical plans and adjustments in response selection as game situations change (McPherson 2008 ;Sutton and McIlwain 2015 ). McRobert's mixed method studies show that experts across a range of sports are thinking more about task-relevant options, and engaging in more prediction and more planning than less skilled performers (McRobert et al 2011 ;Ward et al 2013 ).…”

The Effect of Decision Training, from a Cognitive Perspective, on Decision-Making in Volleyball: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…On the other hand, the performance of athletes will depend on the mental representations and cognitive processes that must be carried out between the interpretation of the stimulus and the selection of the response [37]. Therefore, the athlete's knowledge about the sport will form a basis to favor the selection of the correct answer [38,39].…”