In situ examination of decision-making skills and gaze behaviour of basketball players

Abstract

In this study we examined in situ decision-making skills and gaze behaviour of skilled female basketball players. Players participated as ball carriers in a specific 3 vs 3 pick-and-roll basketball play. Playing both on the right and left side of the court and facing three types of defensive play, they chose and performed one of four options: shoot, drive to the basket, pass to the screener or pass to the corner player. We concurrently measured gaze behaviour to examine the direct relationship between gaze and decision making. As one of the first studies examining decision making and gaze behaviour in situ, this study found support for the embodied choice framework as the results showed that handling the ball with the dominant or non-dominant hand influenced the decisions that were made. Gaze measures suggested that peripheral vision may serve a significant role in decision making in situ, whereas players mainly relied on central vision to execute an action. Furthermore, this study underlined the need for developing and using newer and more informative methods to analyse gaze.

What Do Football Players Look at? An Eye-Tracking Analysis of the Visual Fixations of Players in 11 v 11 Elite Football Match Play

“…These discrepancies raise the question of whether examining football players' visual fixations in a laboratory setting is inadequate when attempting to capture footballers' gaze fixations during the dynamics of match play, where a different landscape of information and sensations influence both decision-making and gaze behavior (Hüttermann et al, 2018). The same differences in duration were also evident when comparing the mean fixation duration from our study to in situ experiments in other sports, such as basketball (342-677 ms;van Maarseveen et al, 2017) and ice hockey (346.74 ms for elite and 591.59 ms for non-elite; Martell and Vickers, 2004). A possible explanation for this might be that the experimental tasks and study context focused on different, specific game situations of each sport: 2 v 2 (Martell andVickers, 2004) and3 v 3 (van Maarseveen et al, 2017).…”

“…There has, therefore, been a call by researchers to study gaze behaviors in environments representative of the specific performance context (Dicks et al, 2010;Eldridge et al, 2013;Klostermann and Moeinirad, 2020). Consequently, in situ designs using eye-trackers in mini-states of the respective sports have been conducted in basketball (van Maarseveen et al, 2017), ice hockey (Martell and Vickers, 2004), and futsal (Corrêa et al, 2020).…”

Perceptual-cognitive skill and the in situ performance of soccer players

“…Therefore, the findings question the suitability of video-based perceptual-cognitive skill tests for studying perceptual-motor expertise (see Dicks et al, 2010 ), and this suggests that caution is warranted when using these tests for talent identification or to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions. Alternatives to the paradigms employed in traditional laboratory studies have been provided by recent technological advances such as mobile eye tracking devices ( Van Maarseveen et al, 2016 ; Pluijms, Cañal-Bruland, Kats, & Savelsbergh, 2013 ), event-related visual occlusion goggles ( Mann et al, 2010 ; Oudejans, van de Langenberg, & Hutter, 2002 ), and virtual reality ( Bideau et al, 2010 ; Correia, Araújo, Cummins, & Craig, 2012 ). In order to accurately capture the perceptual-motor performances of athletes, we suggest using in situ research designs so that the task constraints represent as accurately as possible the natural performance setting of the athlete and actual movement responses are required.…”

Visual gaze behaviour during free-kicks in football

“…The gaze behaviour was manually analysed frame by frame for the duration of the run-up and the kick of the ball. To define a fixation, a threshold of 125 ms was used, which was the same at that used by Van Maarseveen and colleagues 38 and comparable to the 120 ms used by Savelsbergh et al 42 and the 116 ms used by Vaeyens et al 17 To gain more insight into the gaze behaviour, four dependent variablesnumber of fixations on target, fixation duration, fixation location and fixation sequence-were assessed. The onset of each trial was defined as an arbitrary 3 seconds before ball contact (kick) 28 capturing all locomotive phases.…”

“…[35][36][37] It is important to test real actions under match-like constraints and preserve the coupling of perception and action. 16,36,38 In order to accurately capture the perceptual-motor performances of athletes, the current study measures a free-kick situation that is representative of an actual football match.…”