John Baker *, Damian Farrow *, Bruce Elliott ** and Jacqueline Anderson **
(*) Sports Science and Sports Medicine, Australian Institute of Sport
(**) School of Sport Science, Exercise and Health, The University of Western Australia
Citation
Baker, J., Farrow, D., Elliott, B., Anderson, J. (2009). The influence of processing time on expert anticipation. International Journal of Sport Psychology, 40(4), 476-488.
Abstract
This study investigated the influence of processing time on anticipatory skill. In a replication of Farrow, Abernethy and Jackson (2005) two different temporal occlusion paradigms were used to control the amount of processing time accompanying the appearance of specific kinematic information. A video presented dynamic images of a field hockey penalty corner drag flick that required expert and novice hockey goalkeepers to verbally predict the direction of the drag flick at the moment of occlusion. Prediction performance in a traditional progressive temporal occlusion approach, where more information is provided in each successive occlusion condition was compared to a moving window approach that showed the same kinematic information as introduced in the progressive condition but for a fixed viewing period. Consistent with the findings of Farrow et al. (2005) results demonstrated that the information pick up of the participants was similar in the two occlusion conditions suggesting that it is the kinematic content of the occlusion condition rather than processing time that is responsible for the anticipatory skill of the participants.
Keywords: Anticipation, Expert performance, Field hockey, Occlusion paradigms