Perceptions Of Players Research Articles

How does mental fatigue affect soccer performance during small-sided games? A cognitive, tactical and physical approach

ABSTRACT Objectives We examine how mental fatigue (MF) influences peripheral perception, tactical behaviour, and physical performance of soccer players during a standardized small-sided game. Methods Eighteen male university first-team soccer players participated. A modified Stroop task and the Vienna Test System were employed to induce MF and to evaluate players’ peripheral perception, respectively. The FUT-SAT test was used to assess participants’ tactical behaviour and physical performance was quantified using GPS technology. Results MF decreased players’ visual field (pre-test = 189.9° and post-test = 181.6°). Additionally, MF constrained players to more frequently perform actions related to the tactical principles of penetration, depth mobility, and defensive unity, and less frequently perform actions of defensive coverage and balance. During MF, players showed decreased accuracy in actions related to the principles of offensive coverage, width and length, offensive unity, delay, balance, concentration, and defensive unity. Finally, under MF players covered higher total distance and at more moderate speed. Conclusions MF decreased players’ peripheral perception, making them prioritize actions towards the opposing goal and protecting their own goal, while displaying more errors for most tactical actions. In summary, MF impaired several aspects of players’ cognitive and tactical behaviours, causing a compensatory increase in physical performance.

Examination of Coach and Player Perceptions of Recovery and Exertion

Kraft, JA, Laurent, ML, Green, JM, Helm, J, Roberts, C, and Holt, S. Examination of coach and player perceptions of recovery and exertion. J Strength Cond Res 34(5): 1383-1391, 2020-Monitoring training and recovery are essential for exercise programming. Athletes can validly assess training load (TL) via the session rating of perceived exertion (SRPE) technique. However, it is unclear if coaches can successfully use this model. This study compared coach and athlete perceptions of effort and recovery, and it evaluated the efficacy of perceptually based TL monitoring. Participants included 56 athletes (Women's volleyball, soccer, and basketball and Men's basketball) and their coaches (n = 4). Perceived recovery was estimated via the Perceived Recovery Status scale. Scores of TL were calculated using the Edward's heart rate (HR) method and by multiplying SRPE by duration. Coaches provided an intended SRPE (SRPE-CI) before practice. Also, SRPE was independently estimated by coaches (SRPE-CO) and athletes (SRPE-A) ∼15-20 minutes after practice. Paired t-tests and Pearson's correlations were applied to make comparisons (α ≤ 0.05). Values of SRPE-CI, SRPE-CO, SRPE-A TLs were strongly correlated with Edwards' HR-based TLs (R = 0.74, 0.73, and 0.76, respectively). However, SRPE-CI (5.5 ± 1.9) and SRPE-CO (5.0 ± 1.9) was higher than SRPE-A (4.5 ± 1.9). Coaches estimated recovery higher than athletes (7.1 ± 1.3 vs. 5.8 ± 1.6). Estimates of TL strongly correlated with Edwards' TL regardless of information source (coach or athlete) or time point (SRPE-CI TL or SRPE-CO TL). Results suggest that coaches' perceptions validly indicated TL. Coaches' perceptions provide parallel information (correlated strongly with Edwards TL) but not identical information (demonstrated by differences in SRPE) as athlete perceptions. Differences in perceived recovery indicate that coaches overestimate recovery when compared with athletes' perceptions.

The use and perceived value of telestration tools in elite football

ABSTRACTThe proliferation of technology allowing performance analysis practices to become more efficient and effective has grown rapidly in recent years. One such tool that has become widespread amongst elite football clubs is the use of telestration software which allow annotations to be drawn over video footage to illustrate key tactical, technical, physiological or psychological facets in an interactive manner. The purpose of this study is to investigate the use and application of telestration tools in elite football. A descriptive research approach was employed, using detailed questionnaires to gain the views and perceptions of elite analysts, coaches and players. Findings confirm the widespread use of telestration tools in elite football with 93% of respondents stating that it is “essential-very important” to their practice. In particular, telestration is found to play an integral role in oppositional analysis, especially when introducing key tactical information in pre-match meetings. Numerous barriers associated with the use of telestration were also uncovered in this novel, contemporary research which may help set the foundations for further research into telestration tools in sports not limited to football.

How the menstrual cycle and menstruation affect sporting performance: experiences and perceptions of elite female rugby players

ObjectivesTo explore athletes’ past and current experiences and perceptions of the menstrual cycle in relation to its impact on sporting performance.Methods15 international female rugby players participated in individual semi-structured interviews...

Moral decision‐making in video games: A focus group study on player perceptions

Moral decision‐making in video games: A focus group study on player perceptions

Influence of basketball shoe midsole inserts featuring different mechanical rebound properties on biomechanical loading and subjective perception during a side-cutting maneuver

This study examined the influence of basketball shoe midsole inserts with different forefoot and rearfoot rebound properties on biomechanical loading and subjective perception during a side-cutting maneuver. Eleven male basketball players executed side cutting in four shoe conditions mechanically characterized for their rearfoot/forefoot rebound: compliant/compliant, springy/springy, compliant/springy, and springy/compliant. Lower extremity kinetics and kinematics (normalized to body mass), as well as subjective perception, were measured. During the weight-acceptance phase, there were no differences between shoes in all biomechanical variables, except a slightly greater ankle range of motion (1.2° greater than the other three shoes) in the frontal plane for shoe compliant/springy. During the push-off phase, shoe springy/springy led to a greater ankle plantarflexion moment (1.21 Nm/kg greater than the other three shoes, p < 0.001) and knee internal rotation moment (0.09 Nm/kg greater than the other three shoes, p = 0.012), while shoe compliant/springy resulted in a greater ankle range of motion in the frontal plane (1.4° greater than the other three shoes, p < 0.001). Perception data showed no statistically significant difference among any shoes. In conclusion, springy inserts of basketball shoe midsoles induced a biomechanical loading effect. Perception of players being unaffected indicates the importance of biomechanical evaluation to examine the effects of the given shoe modifications during side cutting.

Biomechanical determinants of placekicking success in professional Rugby Union players

ABSTRACTThe ability to score from placekicks discriminates winning from losing Rugby Union teams. We aimed to identify which biomechanical variables related to successful placekicking in professional Rugby Union players, and use self-organising maps (SOM) to determine whether meaningful sub-groups existed. Three professional placekickers performed 10 kicks outdoors. Placekicks were categorised into best, worst, and typical performances based on outcomes and coach and player perceptions. Seven 3D biomechanical variables consistently and meaningfully (moderate Cohen’s effect size) discriminated best from worst placekicks in all players. The three-cluster solution from SOM on these seven variables highlighted differences between players rather than best, worst, and typical attempts. Within-clusters, however, the best and worst placekicks tended to be represented in separate map regions. The seven variables identified using standardised effect sizes can be useful for group-level coaching of placekicking skills in absence of individual data, and translated in an applied setting using verbal and visual cues to promote overall placekicking performance. However, players’ idiosyncrasies formed the main SOM boundaries, indicating that optimising placekicking success would benefit from an individualised approach and numerous effective movement templates may exist.

Evaluating Digital Games for Competitive Music Composition

Digital games are a fertile ground for exploring novel computer music applications. While the lineage of game-based compositional praxis long precedes the advent of digital computers, it flourishes now in a rich landscape of music-making apps, sound toys and playful installations that provide access to music creation through game-like interaction. Characterising these systems is the pervasive avoidance of a competitive game framework, reflecting an underlying assumption that notions of conflict and challenge are somewhat antithetical to musical creativity. As a result, the interplay between competitive gameplay and musical creativity is seldom explored. This article reports on a comparative user evaluation of two original games that frame interactive music composition as a human–computer competition. The games employ contrasting designs so that their juxtaposition can address the following research question: how are player perceptions of musical creativity shaped in competitive game environments? Significant differences were found in system usability, and also creativity and ownership of musical outcomes. The user study indicates that a high degree of musical control is widely preferred despite an apparent cost to general usability. It further reveals that players have diverse criteria for ‘games’ which can dramatically influence their perceptions of musical creativity, control and ownership. These findings offer new insights for the design of future game-based composition systems, and reflect more broadly on the complex relationship between musical creativity, games and competition.

Analysis of Training Load Perception of Young Soccer Players Based on Some Variables

The aim of this study is to examine the perception of training load of young soccer players during a five-week preparation period, based on their positions of play, VO2 max and years licensed and to compare the perceptions of the players with the training load planned by their coach. 17 young soccer players of Beşiktaş Football Club’s U16 team who participated in the pre-season training prior to the 2018-2019 season volunteered to participate in this study. The height of the players is 175.38±4.83 cm, body weight is 64.24±4.59 kg, body mass index is 20.91±1.54 kg/m2 and body fat percentage is 8.45±3.39. During the 5-week preparation period, the players assessed the rate of perceived exertion of the sections of each training session by using the Borg Scale, on a scale from 1 to10. The SPSS package program (SPSS 24) was used for statistical analysis of the research data. The Shapiro-Wilk test was used to assess normality and Levene’s test was used to assess homogeneity. It was determined that the data distribution was normal. An independent t-test was implemented for comparison of the two groups, and a one-way ANOVA test was implemented for the comparison of multiple groups. The statistical results were evaluated at p < 0.05 significance level. As a result, the players’ VO2 max values and the years of licensed soccer play may have an influence on their perception of the training load. The coaches’ and young soccer players’ perception levels of preparation period training load are compatible.

Real Economics in Virtual Worlds: A Massively Multiplayer Online Game Case Study: Runescape

This thesis explores economic aspects of virtual worlds by focusing on a specific massively multiplayer online role-playing game, RuneScape. In particular, it examines the similarities and differences between the virtual economics and real world economics, the economic understanding of RuneScape players and the possibility of using virtual worlds as a laboratory for testing economic behavior and theory. This thesis uses a versatile methodology that includes texts, direct observation, self-reports, and other reports to investigate the research questions. Virtual economics in general and RuneScape in specific are understudied so far and this study fills a gap in the literature. The unique contributions of this thesis are: a comprehensive survey that reveals player perceptions of economics, a new equation useful for modeling money supply, and a new use of faucet-drain economy in massively multiplayer online games. The results indicate that virtual economics of RuneScape partially reflects real world economics, player perceptions of virtual and real world economy are surprisingly complex, and virtual worlds can be used to study real world economics. Game developers, players, economists, educators, researchers, and individuals who are interested in massively multiplayer online games and economy in general can benefit from this study.

Biti il' ne biti - Šekspir i video igre

The paper analyses video games in the context of new media and considers their artistic potential from the perspective of Game Studies. Using to Be or Not to Be, an adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet as an example, the paper presents a theoretical examination of the game's structural, textual and narrative features and ludic elements, so as to elucidate the principles of adaptation and transformation of a literary text into a new digital form, as well as the advantages and the disadvantages of such processes. Trust in the narrative, along with adequate game mechanics and the player's perception have proven to be crucial for accomplishing intention of the game. At the same time, the analysis serves as a basis for interpretive framework that would lead to affirming the aesthetic potential of video games and thus give rise to uncovering the artistic potential of other algorithmic structures.

Predictive modelling of the physical demands during training and competition in professional soccer players

ObjectivesThe present study aimed to predict the cut-off point-values that best differentiate the physical demands of training and competition tasks including friendly matches (FM), small sided games (SSG), large sided games (LSG), mini-goal games (MG) and ball circuit-training (CT) in professional soccer players. DesignExperimental randomized controlled trial. MethodsFourteen professional players participated in all tasks with the CT, SSG and MG consisting of 8 repetitions of 4-min game play, interspersed by 2-min of active recovery. The training data were compared to the first 32-min of the LSG and two competitive FM per player. All movement patterns from walking to sprint running were recorded using 10Hz GPS devices while player perception of exertion was recorded via a visual analogue scale, post-task. Decision tree induction was applied to the dataset to assess the cut-off point-values from four training drills (SSG, LSG, MG, and CT) and FM for every parameter combination. ResultsDistance covered during jogging (2.3–3.3m/s; >436m), number of decelerations (≤730.5) and accelerations (≤663), and maximum velocity reached (>5.48m/s) characterized the physical demands during competition (FM) with great variability amongst training drills. ConclusionThe use of these novel, cut-off points may aid coaches in the design and use of training drills to accurately prepare athletes for soccer competition.

Ability to Discriminate Online Poker Tilt Episodes: A New Way to Prevent Excessive Gambling?

Tilt is a very common term in online poker players' vocabulary, it describes a state where the player is no longer able to make rational decisions because they are overwhelmed by strong emotions. This study aims to explore the relation existing between the frequency of Tilt episodes, the player's perception of these episodes and excessive gambling in online poker. The sample is composed of 291 adult French-speaking online poker players. All participants completed an online self-assessment questionnaire. The results of the classification analysis showed that the sample could be divided into three groups. The first group, named ''players in control'' included low excessive gambling tendencies with low perceived and measured Tilt frequencies. The two other groups showed high measured tilt levels, with perceived tilt levels that were different from the measured levels. Furthermore, these two groups present a moderate usage risk of developing an excessive gambling tendency in a money-based game of chance. These results show the existence of a relation between the player's capacity to perceive tilt and the online poker player's behavior.

Myopic perception in repeated games

In obtaining the celebrated folk theorem, not only everyone must value his future sufficiently high, but also everyone must be perceived so by the others. This common perception of players' time preferences must be maintained even after someone deviates. This paper explores the implications of myopic perception in repeated games with perfect monitoring. Under myopic perception, a deviator will not be perceived as a long-run player in the continuation game, which in turn affects the equilibria in the repeated game before deviation. We develop an algorithm to compute a set that characterizes almost all equilibrium payoffs when the discount factor is sufficiently high. When the stage game has a unique Nash equilibrium and it strictly dominates all other stage-game payoffs, then under myopic perception, the corresponding repeated game has a unique subgame perfect equilibrium.

Exploring Cultural Differences in Game Reception: JRPGs in Germany and Japan

In this paper we present the first results of an ongoing research project focused on examining the European reception of Japanese video games, and we compare it with the reception in Japan. We hope to contribute towards a better understanding of how player perception and evaluation of a game is influenced by cultural background. Applying a grounded theory approach, we conducted a qualitative content analysis of articles from German video gamewebsites, user comments responding to articles, as well as Japanese and German user reviews from the respective Amazon online stores and Steam. Focusing on the reception of three Japanese RPGs, our findings show that considerable differences exist in how various elements of the games are perceived between cultures. We also briefly discuss certain lexical differences in the way players write about games, indicating fundamental differences in how Japanese and German players talk (and think) about games.

A Study of AI Agent Commitment in One Night Ultimate Werewolf with Human Players

Social deduction games are a genre of board games in which a group of players is secretly assigned roles and each player tries to determine the other players’ roles. However, some roles have an incentive to not be found, and the games typically allow players to lie freely. Playing such games is a challenging task for AI agents, because they need to not only determine the probability that each statement made by the other players is truthful, but also come up with convincing lies themselves. In this paper, we present AI agents designed to play one particular such game, One Night Ultimate Werewolf, with human players. We discuss the different deliberation strategies our agents use to determine what they should say, and when they should change their plan. To determine how these different deliberation strategies are perceived by human players, we performed an experiment in which participants played a Unity implementation of the game with each of the three deliberation strategies. We present the results of this experiment, which show that commitment to plans has a measurable effect on player perception and provide a trade-off between consistency and potential for high performance of the agent.

Violent Life in an Inclusive Classroom: Come on, Read, Peter! Moving From Moral Judgment to an Onto-Epistemological Ethics

In this article, we begin with a story in which a teacher is perceived as cruel, a boy experiences exclusion, and a support worker feels guilty for not responding. Working together with students, we have written a play script that explores the entangled intra-active perceptions of the various players. The script was used in the professional development of educators as a means of exploring the diffractive movements through which differences are made in inclusive classrooms. It opens the possibility of moving away from thinking in terms of individual accountability toward an intra-active exploration of the ethics of such encounters.

Australian Rugby League player understanding, attitudes and perceptions of concussion at different professional levels

Australian Rugby League player understanding, attitudes and perceptions of concussion at different professional levels

대학 축구팀에서 주장 역할에 대한 지도자, 주장, 선수의 인식 탐색

대학 축구팀에서 주장 역할에 대한 지도자, 주장, 선수의 인식 탐색

Role of vaccine efficacy in the vaccination behavior under myopic update rule on complex networks.

How to effectively prevent the diffusion of infectious disease has become an intriguing topic in the field of public hygienics. To be noted that, for the non-periodic infectious diseases, many people hope to obtain the vaccine of epidemics in time to be inoculated, rather than at the end of the epidemic. However, the vaccine may fail as a result of invalid storage, transportation and usage, and then vaccinated individuals may become re-susceptible and be infected again during the outbreak. To this end, we build a new framework that considers the imperfect vaccination during the one cycle of infectious disease within the spatially structured and heterogeneous population. Meanwhile, we propose a new vaccination update rule: myopic update rule, which is only based on one focal player's own perception regarding the disease outbreak, and one susceptible individual makes a decision to adopt the vaccine just by comparing the perceived payoffs vaccination with the perceived ones of being infected. Extensive Monte-Carlo simulations are performed to demonstrate the imperfect vaccination behavior under the myopic update rule in the spatially structured and heterogeneous population. The results indicate that healthy individuals are often willing to inoculate the vaccine under the myopic update rule, which can stop the infectious disease from being spread, in particular, it is found that the vaccine efficacy influences the fraction of vaccinated individuals much more than the relative cost of vaccination on the regular lattice, Meanwhile, vaccine efficacy is more sensitive on the heterogeneous scale-free network. Current results are helpful to further analyze and model the choice of vaccination strategy during the disease outbreaks.