The ability to anticipate and make accurate decisions in a timely manner is fundamental to high-level performance in sport. This is the first book to identify the underlying science behind anticipation and decision making in sport, enhancing our scientific understanding of these phenomena and helping practitioners to develop interventions to facilitate the more rapid acquisition of the perceptual-cognitive skills that underpin these judgements.
Adopting a multidisciplinary approach - encompassing research from psychology, biomechanics, neuroscience, physiology, computing science, and performance analysis - the book is divided into three sections. The first section provides a comprehensive analysis of the processes and mechanisms underpinning anticipation and skilled perception in sport. In the second section, the focus shifts towards exploring the science of decision making in sport. The final section is more applied, outlining how the key skills that impact on anticipation and decision making may be facilitated through various training interventions.
With chapters written by leading experts from a vast range of countries and continents, no other book offers such a synthesis of the historical development of the field, contemporary research, and future areas for investigation in anticipation and decision making in sport. This is a fascinating and important text for students and researchers in sport psychology, skill acquisition, expert performance, motor learning, motor behaviour, and coaching science, as well as practicing coaches from any sport.
Part I: Characteristics of expert anticipation in sport
1. Postural cues, biological motion perception, and anticipation in sport
2. Familiarity detection and pattern perception
3. Contextual information and its role in expert anticipation
4. Visual search behaviours in expert perceptual judgments
5. The role of peripheral vision in sports and everyday life
6. Deception in sport
7. Emotion and its impact on perception
8. Neurophysiological studies of action anticipation in sport
9. Motor simulation in action prediction: sport-specific considerations
10. Perception-action for the study of anticipation and decision making
Part II: Characteristics of expert decision making in sport
11. Tactical creativity and decision making in sport
12. Heuristics, biases, and decision making
13. High-stakes decision making: anxiety and cognition
14. Decision making in match officials and judges
Part III: Training anticipation and decision making in sport
15. Practice and sports activities in the acquisition of anticipation and decision making
16. Training perceptual-cognitive expertise: how should practice be structured?
17. Instructional approaches for developing anticipation and decision making in sport
18. Integrating performance analysis and perceptual-cognitive training
19. Virtual environments and their role in developing perceptual-cognitive skills in sports
20. Training under pressure: current perspectives and future directions
21. Transfer of expert visual-perceptual-motor skill in sport
