Sport Expertise Research Articles

From Imaginative Experiments to Inventive Performances: On the Role of Creativity in the Developmental Experiences of Professional Ice Hockey Players

Despite an increasing interest in studying creativity in sport, previous research has primarily focused on in-game creative performance and employed research designs neglecting sport participants’ perspectives. Hence, this study explored professional athletes’ developmental experiences involving creativity. Semistructured retrospective interviews were conducted with eight ice hockey players performing in or retired from the National Hockey League, Kontinental Hockey League, or Swedish Hockey League. Players described 15 modalities of creative actions emerging when playing, practicing, and performing. Based on the players’ experiences, creativity led to augmented levels of enjoyment (i.e., elicited passion), development (i.e., enhanced potential), achievement (i.e., enriched in-game qualification), and fulfillment (i.e., extended career progression). Findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of creativity in sport and provide novel insights on the role of creativity in the development and maintenance of expertise in sport and the nature and role of deliberate play and deliberate practice in developing creativity.

The Role of a Forensic Expert in the Field of Self-Defense Under Current Legislation and Beyond

A forensic expert in the field of self-defense is a specialist with extensive knowledge in defence methods, close combat, defensive means, or coercive means. The core of the forensic expert's work in this field is the assessment of the facts of conflict situations in which physical violence between two or more persons has been used. The role of a forensic expert is to answer questions related to the parties' roles in the conflict, factors that influenced the conduct of the fight, the course of the fight and the possibility of resolving the conflict situation. Self-defense expertise is sometimes associated or confused with martial arts or combat sports expertise. This judgment is based on the assumption that most forensic experts in the field of self-defense also have experience or expertise in martial arts and combat sports. Such knowledge is an advantage for the profession of forensic expert in the field of self-defense, similar to knowledge in the field of weapons and ammunition, but it is not the same area as expertise in the field of self-defense or a condition for the exercise of this profession. The new Act No. 254/2019 Coll., on forensic experts, expert offices and expert institutes, faces professional criticism in several areas (expert duties, sanctions, division of specializations, etc.) and is likely to lead to pressure for further amendments. The article deals with these changes and the perspective in the coming years with the expert opinion of current forensic experts on the field of self-defense on the appropriate inclusion of this specialization in the future categorization of specializations.

Challenges and understandings of creative practice in professional sport training.

We conducted a qualitative study involving twelve expert sports coaches to explore and compare the range of creative practices they adopted during their professional activities. Their written responses to open-ended questions highlighted different interrelated dimensions of creative engagement in coaching sport, suggesting that efforts to instil creativity may initially focus on an individual athlete; they may often span a range of behaviours dedicated to efficiency; they may involve significant degrees of freedom and trust; and they cannot be captured by a single defining feature. We contextualise these findings in the light of recent literature in sports studies, performance science and creativity research, providing concrete examples based on the written statements provided by our participants. We conclude by offering insights for future research and coaching practice that may be relevant in broader domains.

Hybrid System Mixed Reality and Marker-Less Motion Tracking for Sports Rehabilitation of Martial Arts Athletes

Rehabilitation is a vast field of research. Virtual and Augmented Reality represent rapidly emerging technologies that have the potential to support physicians in several medical activities, e.g., diagnosis, surgical training, and rehabilitation, and can also help sports experts analyze athlete movements and performance. In this study, we present the implementation of a hybrid system for the real-time visualization of 3D virtual models of bone segments and other anatomical components on a subject performing critical karate shots and stances. The project is composed of an economic markerless motion tracking device, Microsoft Kinect Azure, that recognizes the subject movements and the position of anatomical joints; an augmented reality headset, Microsoft HoloLens 2, on which the user can visualize the 3D reconstruction of bones and anatomical information; and a terminal computer with a code implemented in Unity Platform. The 3D reconstructed bones are overlapped with the athlete, tracked by the Kinect in real-time, and correctly displayed on the headset. The findings suggest that this system could be a promising technology to monitor martial arts athletes after injuries to support the restoration of their movements and position to rejoin official competitions.

Sport expertise and physical exercise are associated with “hot” executive functioning: An electrophysiological examination of reward processing in collegiate athletes

ABSTRACT Objective Prior research has revealed potential effects of sports expertise and physical exercise on cognition, though there is limited research examining their effects on the “hot,” emotional-processing aspects of executive functioning (e.g., valence and reward processing important for decision-making). The present study aimed to address this gap by examining event-related brain potentials (ERPs) during a reward-processing task in athletes versus non-athletes, while also investigating if sport expertise and exercise influence this electrophysiological response. Method A total of 45 participants, including 22 athletes (55% women, 45% men) and 23 non-athlete controls (57% women, 43% men) between the ages of 18–27, completed a “virtual T-maze” environment task involving a rewarded forced choice that elicits the reward positivity (Rew-P), an ERP component associated with reward processing. Rew-P peak amplitude was compared between groups, and both sport expertise and frequency of strenuous exercise were investigated as potential predictors of the Rew-P in athletes. Results No significant Rew-P differences were found between athletes and controls (t = −1.43, p = .16, d = −.43). However, frequency of strenuous exercise (β = −.51, p = .01) and sport expertise (β = −.48, p = .01) each accounted for a significant proportion of variability in the Rew-P peak amplitude in athletes. Conclusions Results indicate that, for young adults, sport expertise and physical exercise may each account for heightened electrophysiological reward sensitivity in athletes. Potential implications are discussed for decision-making, an integral cognitive process in sports that is driven by reward processing, and the role of reward-seeking and motivation in sport proficiency.

Clustering of variables methods and measurement models for soccer players’ performances

In sports, studying player performances is a key issue since it provides a guideline for strategic choices and helps teams in the complex procedure of buying and selling of players. In this paper we aim at investigating the ability of various composite indicators to define a measurement structure for the global soccer performance. We rely on data provided by the EA Sports experts, who are the ultimate authority on soccer performance measurement: they periodically produce a set of players’ attributes that make up the broader, theoretical performance dimensions. Considering the potential of clustering techniques to confirm or disconfirm the experts’ assumptions in terms of aggregations between indicators, 29 players’ performance attributes or variables (from the FIFA19 version of the videogame, that is, sofifa) have been considered and processed with three different techniques: the Cluster of variables around latent variables (CLV), the Principal covariates regression (PCovR) and Bayesian model-based clustering (B-MBC). The three procedures yielded clusters that differed from experts’ classification. In order to identify the most appropriate measurement structure, the resulting clusters have been embedded into Structural equation models with partial least squares (PLS-SEMs) with a Higher-Order Component (that is, the overall soccer performance). The statistically derived composite indicators have been compared with those of experts’ classification. Results support the concurrent validity of composite indicators derived through the statistical methods: overall, they show that, in the lack of expert judgement, composite indicators, as well as the resulting PLS-SEM models, are a viable alternative given their greater correlation to players’ economic value and salary.

Systems factorial technology provides novel insights into the cognitive processing characteristics of open-skill athletes

Sport expertise has been shown to modulate the cognitive advantage in open-skill athletes, with evidence for a greater advantage for athletes practicing interceptive sports relative to strategic sports. However, this conclusion is solely based on central tendency measures such as accuracy or mean reaction time (RT), dismissing important information embedded in the intra-individual temporal dynamics of cognitive performance. This study aimed to better understand the cognitive advantage associated with open-skill sports, with a non-parametric approach assessing cognitive process at the level of RT distribution (i.e., systems factorial technology, SFT). Twenty-eight interceptive sport athletes, 27 strategic sport athletes, and 26 physically active non-athletes performed a go/nogo version of the redundant target task to assess their processing capacity of simultaneously monitoring multiple information channels. SFT was applied to assess resilience capacity, an estimate of workload capacity underlying inhibitory control. Our findings showed that interceptive sport athletes exhibited shorter mean RT relative to non-athletes selectively in the task condition involving distracting information, while strategic sport athletes showed greater resilience capacity over earlier responses relative to the other groups. These findings suggest that the two types of open-skill sports may be associated with different processing specificity, possibly reflecting the domain-specific rules and requirements.

Research on visual search behaviors of basketball players at different levels of sports expertise

This study aims to examine visual search strategies of skilled basketball players in an anticipation task. This study selected 48 experienced and inexperienced basketball players. The participants were grouped into novice and expert groups based on their experience. The participants were asked to look at series of pictures of offensive patterns of play in a basketball game from a third person perspective and chose one of the three options: passing, shooting and break through. This study measured and recorded the response time, key pressing results, and eye movements. Eye movement data were recorded using the Tobii X-3 120 eye tracker. The results showed that, the expert group demonstrated superior anticipation performance, and were more accuracy. In addition, the results showed that participants in the expert group and faster predicted the offensive way faster than the novice group. The results also showed that experienced basketball players employed a simple and efficient visual search strategy including greater fixation counts and longer fixation duration on more informative areas than the novice group. Furthermore, the visualization metrics showed that the expert group had a more concise fixation trajectory and focused mainly on key information area. Generally, expert players exhibited a more efficient and effective visual search strategy demonstrating better performance on anticipation tasks.

The Ball is in Our Court: Conducting Visualization Research With Sports Experts.

Most sports visualizations rely on a combination of spatial, highly temporal, and user-centric data, making sports a challenging target for visualization. Emerging technologies, such as augmented and mixed reality (AR/XR), have brought exciting opportunities along with new challenges for sports visualization. We share our experience working with sports domain experts and present lessons learned from conducting visualization research in SportsXR. In our previous work, we have targeted different types of users in sports, including athletes, game analysts, and fans. Each user group has unique design constraints and requirements, such as obtaining real-time visual feedback in training, automating the low-level video analysis workflow, or personalizing embedded visualizations for live game data analysis. In this article, we synthesize our best practices and pitfalls we identified while working on SportsXR. We highlight lessons learned in working with sports domain experts in designing and evaluating sports visualizations and in working with emerging AR/XR technologies. We envision that sports visualization research will benefit the larger visualization community through its unique challenges and opportunities for immersive and situated analytics.

Understanding Central- and Eastern European migrants’ inclusion into sport: a Delphi study

ABSTRACT The world is, again, witnessing a humanitarian ‘crisis’, as over seven million Ukrainian refugees have fled the border at the time of writing. Culturally sensitive practices are keys in leveraging sport for migrants. Yet, this research has not explored what cultural sensitivity is, regarding Central- and Eastern European (CEE) migrants. This paper assessed culturally contingent components when considering CEE migrants inclusion into European sport. The Delphi method was deployed, and three rounds of data collection were conducted. 19 CEE experts in sport (researchers, NGOs, governmental employees) were recruited to jointly produce a set of consensual directives. The results were analysed with Bronfenbrenner’s Process-Person-Context-Time model. The key agreements consisted of four significant themes. Facilitators included shared experiences of (organised) sport, and CEE migrants’ familiarity with other cultures. Barriers included the nature of labour migration on time- and economy to engage in leisure, and stereotypical and misleading perceptions of ‘post-soviet residents’. In conclusion, the results show that a range of similarities may exist between CEE and European (sport) contexts that could be conducive to CEE migrants’ inclusion into European sport, but that practitioners will need to be aware of sensitive Soviet history.

Effect of arm movement on balance performance in children: role of expertise in gymnastics

Studies have shown that balance performance is better in gymnasts compared to age-/sex-matched controls and further studies revealed superior performance when arms were free to move during assessment of balance. However, it is unknown whether free arm movement during balance testing differentially affects balance performance with respect to sports expertise (i.e., gymnasts areless affected than age-/sex-matched controls). Therefore, we investigated the effect of arm movement on balance performance in young female gymnasts compared to age-/sex-matched controls while performing balance tasks with various difficulty levels. In both samples, balance performance (except for the timed one-legged stance) was significantly better during free compared to restricted arm movement conditions and this was especially observed in the highest task difficulty condition of the 3-m beam walking backward test. These findings revealed that balance performance is positively affected by free arm movements, but this does not seem to be additionally influenced by the achieved expertise level in young gymnasts.

HOW PHYSICALLY ACTIVE ARE SPORTS EXPERTS?

Through their actions and behavior forms, coaches set an example for the athletes they work with, and additionally oblige them to lead a healthy lifestyle, which includes a proper diet and regular physical activity manifested in various forms. The aim of the paper is to compare the categories of physical activities between male and female sports experts. The results of the research showed that 63% of trainers practice high physical activity, and 36% moderate physical activity, with women applying high physical activity by 6.8% more than male sports experts. Observed physical activity is expressed in MET units (metabolic equivalent of task). The analysis of the chi-square test did not show a statistically significant difference in the representation of physical activity categories among male and female sports experts. The observed level of physical activity (light, moderate, heavy, total physical activity), analyzed using the t-test for independent samples, did not show a significant difference between male and female coaches. Keywords: coaches, IPAQ questionnaire, MET-values, lifestyle

다국적 기업의 현지화 광고 제작 과정에서 나타난 체육계 전문가의 문화 매개 경험

The purpose of this study is to examine how Nike, the main body of global media, and the autonomy of local Sports Professionals in the production of glocalized advertisements for multinational companies, are balanced, and to explore the role and limitations of sports workers as cultural intermediaries. The study's findings are listed below. First, the study participants participated in the production of glocalization advertisements for Nike, a multinational corporation, from an outsider called a sports expert to an insider called a cultural intermediaries. Second, Participants in the study were found to carry out cultural mediation activities such as changing sports, simplifying physical activities, and sharing data to actively reproduce the sports culture as cultural intermediaries, and trying to project the essence of sports into glocalization advertisements. They also attempted to project the essence of sports into glocalization advertisements. Third, it was noted that study participants felt left out from cultural mediation activities because of their ability to participate as cultural intermediaries was limited by multinational corporations.

A quantitative approach to testing effects of different expertise levels, playing positions, and game situations on shared tactical knowledge in football teams

According to the social cognitive view, the organization of sports team behavior is underpinned by the existence of shared knowledge. This study considers tactical position knowledge as an example of shared macro-level plans involved in organizing team behavior. A coach- and a team-referenced measure of sharedness in tactical knowledge are introduced to test whether expert sport teams share knowledge to a higher degree than weaker sport teams (RQ1), whether the time spent performing a common task predicts shared knowledge (RQ2), whether role-specific specializations are mirrored in the degree to which athletes share tactical knowledge (RQ3) and whether tactical knowledge is shared to different degrees in defensive as opposed to offensive game situations (RQ4).
 Members of 17 football teams (N = 296) participating in championships at different levels of the Swiss National Football Federation took part in the scenario-based, cross-sectional study. Participants marked the positions of their team members according to their tactical playing strategy. Data were analyzed using multiple regression and mixed linear model procedures.
 Teams playing at the professional level had significantly more consistent ideas about their teams’ tactical positions than those at the amateur level. Within the amateur level, no consistent pattern of increasing consensus as the playing level increased was found. Sharedness in tactical knowledge increased with the duration of team membership when considering the team-referenced congruency measure. However, the effect was low. Overall, there was a pattern of defenders and midfielders agreeing with their team reference positions more than did goal keepers and forwards. Sharedness was generally higher in defensive situations than in offensive situations.
 The presented approach to measuring shared knowledge offers new insights into a yet under-researched field. It can be adopted to answering research questions in other sports and situations involving other measures of team performance assumed to be affected by shared knowledge.

Partnership between Chinese Dance Sport Couples: A Consensual Qualitative Research Analysis.

The aim of our study was to explore the conceptions related to partnership between dance sport couples. We conducted in-depth interviews with 20 registered athletes of the Chinese Dance Sports Federation (CDSF) about partnership between dance couples, using the Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR) method. Results revealed that partnership tended to stem from seven domains: (1) mutual understanding, (2) instant intimacy, (3) long-term affection, (4) obligational ties, (5) instrumental ties, (6) tacit factors, and (7) mutual self-disclosure. Each domain included several categories of core ideas, most of which were general and typical across the respondents. The general and most typical core ideas were related to mutual understanding in all aspects (17T), pleasure (18T), sense of substitution (15T), intimacy (20G), harmony (20G), mutual help (20G), mutual tolerance (20G), mutual attraction (15T), responsibility (20G), training plan (12T), consistent goals (20G), skills improvement (20G), image matching (16T), mutual self-disclosure (18T), which suggested a general belief in the equity perspective regarding partnership between Chinese dance sport couples. Future studies need to examine diverse samples of athlete-athlete dyads to advance interpersonal theory in sports and add to emerging theories of performance behavior and expertise in sport.

Automation of Computer Vision Applications for Real-time Combat Sports Video Analysis

This study examines the potential applications of Human Action Recognition (HAR) in combat sports and aims to develop a prototype automation client that examines a video of a combat sports competition or training session and accurately classifies human movements. Computer Vision (CV) architectures that examine real-time video data streams are being investigated by integrating Deep Learning architectures into client-server systems for data storage and analysis using customised algorithms. The development of the automation client for training and deploying CV robots to watch and track specific chains of human actions is a central component of the project. Categorising specific chains of human actions allows for the comparison of multiple athletes' techniques as well as the identification of potential areas for improvement based on posture, accuracy, and other technical details, which can be used as an aid to improve athlete efficiency. The automation client will also be developed for the purpose of scoring, with a focus on the automation of the CV model to analyse and score a competition using a specific ruleset. The model will be validated by comparing performance and accuracy to that of combat sports experts. The primary research domains are CV, automation, robotics, combat sports, and decision science. Decision science is a set of quantitative techniques used to assist people to make decisions. The creation of a new automation client may contribute to the development of more efficient machine learning and CV applications in areas such as process efficiency, which improves user experience, workload management to reduce wait times, and run-time optimisation. This study found that real-time object detection and tracking can be combined with real-time pose estimation to generate performance statistics from a combat sports athlete's movements in a video.

Automation of Computer Vision Applications for Real-time Combat Sports Video Analysis

This study examines the potential applications of Human Action Recognition (HAR) in combat sports and aims to develop a prototype automation client that examines a video of a combat sports competition or training session and accurately classifies human movements. Computer Vision (CV) architectures that examine real-time video data streams are being investigated by integrating Deep Learning architectures into client-server systems for data storage and analysis using customised algorithms. The development of the automation client for training and deploying CV robots to watch and track specific chains of human actions is a central component of the project. Categorising specific chains of human actions allows for the comparison of multiple athletes' techniques as well as the identification of potential areas for improvement based on posture, accuracy, and other technical details, which can be used as an aid to improve athlete efficiency. The automation client will also be developed for the purpose of scoring, with a focus on the automation of the CV model to analyse and score a competition using a specific ruleset. The model will be validated by comparing performance and accuracy to that of combat sports experts. The primary research domains are CV, automation, robotics, combat sports, and decision science. Decision science is a set of quantitative techniques used to assist people to make decisions. The creation of a new automation client may contribute to the development of more efficient machine learning and CV applications in areas such as process efficiency, which improves user experience, workload management to reduce wait times, and run-time optimisation. This study found that real-time object detection and tracking can be combined with real-time pose estimation to generate performance statistics from a combat sports athlete's movements in a video.

Protocol for national mental health guidelines for community sport in Australia

Organised sports are the most common settings for sports participation. Despite a range of documented benefits from participation, these positive outcomes are not always guaranteed. Emotional distress from pressure and...

Development of Evaluation Indicators for Sports Facilities for People with Disabilities Considering the Universal Design: Focusing on the Republic of Korea.

We developed evaluation indicators for sports facilities for people with disabilities and adopted the universal design to conduct Delphi surveys on sports facilities and sports experts. First, the range of universal design element reflection and the method of deriving the evaluation indicators were established through a literature review. Second, 21 experts conducted the first Delphi survey to select the important features of the seven principles of universal design and describe the necessary sub-factors to consider when designing sports facilities. The described elements were divided into 15 categories, and 49 sub-factors were extracted. Third, based on the evaluation of the indicators' content, acceptance was investigated, and the survey data were analyzed through indicators of reliability and validity of the sub-factors and categories. Fourth, we discussed whether to accept the standard value on the basis of the evaluation index through an expert meeting. Subsequently, the final evaluation index was obtained. The developed evaluation index should be applied by the operators and users of public sports facilities, and validation work is needed. Guidelines for applying the universal design to various sports facilities for people with disabilities should be developed. The financing of sports facilities applying the universal design and related policies should be discussed.

Sport parenting during the COVID-19 pandemic: Perceptions of parents and youth in Australia

Understanding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on parental involvement in youth sport is largely unknown. The objective of the study presented in this paper was to understand parental involvement in relation to their child’s participation in organised sport during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using an interpretive descriptive methodology, online qualitative interviews and online focus groups with parents and youth (15–18 years) (n = 29) were conducted during June 2020. Following a rigorous reflexive thematic analysis, four themes illustrated the nature of sport parenting during this stressful and uncertain period: (a) reshaping sport parenting identity, (b) the unexpected growth of sport parenting responsibilities, (c) responding to children’s loss of sport, and (d) policies impact family commitment and attitudes to returning to sport. The findings are discussed considering Harwood and Knight’s (2015) postulates of parenting expertise in sport and offer potential ideas to better support parents and children situated in unexpectedly stressful situations.