Enhancing motor learning of young soccer players through preventing an internal focus of attention: The effect of shoes colour.

Goran Kuvacic,Gavin Lawrence,Marco Mingardi,Andrea De Giorgio,Luigi Mainolfi,Johnny Padulo,Maha Sellami

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0200689

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to assess how the motor learning skills in 7-years old soccer players can be improved by preventing an internal focus of attention via the use coloured shoes. We painted the classic black soccer shoes in six areas corresponding to six regions of the foot with which it is possible to interact with the ball. Thirty-four 7-years-old soccer players were randomized to two groups (Coloured n = 17 and Black, n = 17) to perform four basic football manoeuvres/tasks: reception (RECP), passing (PASS), ball management (MAGT), and shooting (SHOT). We found highly significant differences (P<0.001) in all four performance tests: mean(sd) RECP: 0.82(0.07) vs. 0.45(0.12); PASS: 0.85(0.07) vs. 0.47(0.09); MAGT: 0.91(0.09); SHOT: 1.00(1.00) vs. 0.44(0.16). Colored shoes appear to draw children’s attention away from body centered cues without explicit verbal communications. We propose that this cognitive adaptation enhanced the technical gesture by preventing the negative processes associated with action constraining when adopting an internal focus attention (perhaps by allowing the foot to adapt to surfaces and movements more naturally than conditions that promote a focus on the body movement). Consequently, this type of coloured footwear could be used during childhood to allow children to enhance the performance of basic football exercises through preventing action constraining and promoting intuitive (non-body centered) action knowledge.

Highlights

Soccer is a team sport where players are confronted with complex movements such as running with rapid changes of direction, with or without ball; and various kicking actions in specific and rapidly changing planes [1,2]
Highly significant differences were observed between COLOUR and BLACK (p
In SHOT performances, COLOUR performed all the kicks properly compared to BLACK (mean (SD); 6.00(/) vs. 5.18(0.63)

Summary

Introduction

Soccer is a team sport where players are confronted with complex movements such as running with rapid changes of direction, with or without ball; and various kicking actions in specific and rapidly changing planes [1,2]. The development of tactical skills (effective individually based decision making) is an complex interaction between; the players knowledge of action rules i.e., important conditions and elements required for efficient action (e.g., if I want to ‘keep the ball’ I should protect the ball using my body); the rules for managing play organization i.e., principles that facilitate elaboration of a strategy (e.g., creating imbalance in ones favour), and perceptual and sensory-motor skills (i.e., the movement skills and the capabilities of players to recognize important perceptual information and act upon it). These perceptual skills consist of recognition, anticipatory cue extraction and use, visual search behavior [6] and acoustic detection [5]

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Conclusion