SCS5043 Summary of Notational Analysis

Introduction
• When anticipating an opponent’s intentions in fast ball sports, expert performers are thought to initially rely on contextual information (e.g., player positioning,shot sequencing) with relevant postural cues becoming available closer to the moment of the opponent’s racket-ball contact (Müller & Abernethy, 2012).
• Research is therefore required which examines the cognitive mechanisms underpinning expert anticipation when constrained to anticipate based on contextual information alone and when relevant postural cues are also available.
• Whereas Long Term Working Memory theory (Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995) predicts that higher levels of performance will be related to the generation of more task relevant and fewer task-irrelevant options, the Take The First heuristic (Johnson & Raab, 2003) predicts that higher performance levels will result from the generation of fewer options.

Aim
• To examine the option generation strategies of expert and novice tennis players when anticipating the intentions of an opponent based on information which would normally be picked up sequentially prior to the opponent striking the ball.

Methods
• 12 expert and 14 novice tennis players viewed videos and animations of the same rallies from real matches

• Animations, which had been created from player movement and ball trajectory data, omitted postural information such that participants were constrained to anticipate based on contextual information alone.
• When trials were occluded at the opponent’s (far player’s) racket-ball contact,participants indicated on a scaled image of a tennis court each shot they thought the opponent might hit as well as indicating which shot they thought was most likely to be hit (the anticipated shot).
• Prior to data collection, two expert coaches identified all options that the receiving player should be concerned about in both conditions. These options were deemed task-relevant with all other options deemed task-irrelevant.

Results
• Experts were more accurate than novices in both display conditions (p < .01) with this difference being greater in the video condition Anticipation accuracy (%) in video and animated display conditions
• Participants generated fewer options in the video than the animated display condition
• Experts generated more task-relevant and fewer task-irrelevant options than
• A Significant negative relationship was observed between accuracy and number of options generated in the video condition (r = -.44, p = .01) but not in the animated condition (r = -.25, p = .11)

 

Devise a code to analyse shot selection and court position of each player when executing their shots during the badminton match. Use an appropriate statistical test to: - Analyse the differences in frequencies of the shots by the two players. Analyse the differences in frequencies of the area of the court from which winning shots are played and where they land and the type of shot used. You are required to present your analysis in the form of an academic poster and provide an audio file to supplement and embellish the content. Things to think about:

 

Describe and analyse your results using SPSS, graphical illustration and tables where appropriate. Lee et al. (2005) found that the lob, net, and clear were the most frequently played shots. Contrast your results to that of Lee et al. (2005) and other recent literature. Based on your findings, what would you advise the players (or players’ coaches) to do to potentially improve their performance? Back your coaching points with appropriate literature.