Abstract
The importance within sport expertise of cognitive factors has been emphasised in many research studies. Adaptations that take place in athletes’ long-term memories are going to condition their decision-making and performance, and training programmes must be developed that improve these adaptations. In our study, we provide a tactical-cognitive training programme based on video-feedback and questioning in order to improve tactical knowledge in tennis players and verify its effect when transferred to athletes’ decision-making. 11 intermediate tennis players participated in this study (12.9±0.7 years old), distributed into two groups (experimental, n = 5; control, n = 6). Tactical knowledge was measured by problem representation and strategy planning with a verbal protocol. Decision-making was measured by a systematic observation instrument. Results confirm the effectiveness of a combination of video-feedback and questioning on cognitive expertise, developing adaptations in long-term memory that produce an improvement in the quality of tactical knowledge (content, sophistication and structure). This, in turn, is transferred to the athletes’ decision-making capacity, leading to a higher percentage of successful decisions made during game play. Finally, we emphasise the need to develop effective programmes to develop cognitive expertise and improve athletes' performance, and include it in athletes’ formative stages.
Highlights
We can find many research studies within the field of expert performance that emphasise the influence of cognitive elements on sport expertise
From the cognitive psychology approach, expertise level in a certain sport depends on inner mental representations and on the cognitive processes that lie between stimulus interpretation and action selection [4]
Problem representation To test the effect of the intervention programme on problem representation, a 262 Mixed MANOVA was performed on Concept Content-total, Concept Content-variety, Concept Sophistication and Concept Structure
Summary
We can find many research studies within the field of expert performance that emphasise the influence of cognitive elements on sport expertise (see [1,2,3] for a review). Related to deliberate decision-making and with reference to knowledge and internal processes, as the sport expertise level increases, we can find greater development of specific adaptations and structures, stored in the long-term memory (LTM). Specialised profiles in the LTM (e.g., action plan profiles and current event profiles) will make access to relevant tactical information easier This will help athletes take better and more successful decisions in real game play situations [6,12,13]. It is possible to find a considerable relationship between expertise level, knowledge, tactical decision-making skills and performance in sport [24,25] All these cognitive characteristics enable expert tennis players to make more suitable decisions based on superior mental representations [6], it being necessary to develop the different cognitive processes related to performance. An improvement of athletes’ cognitive expertise will produce an increase in decision-making skills with a higher percentage of successful decisions made during real game play
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