ECOLOGICAL DYNAMICS IN ANALYSIS OF PERFORMANCE IN TEAM SPORT - Davids, K.

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18th annual ECSS Congress Barcelona/Spain, June 26-29 2013
ECOLOGICAL DYNAMICS IN ANALYSIS OF PERFORMANCE IN TEAM SPORT - DAVIDS, K. [AUSTRALIA]
Queensland University of Technology
Many theoretical attempts to understand performance in team sports have an implicit basis in enrichment theories, which focus on the
role of psychological processes, such as perception, anticipation and decision-making, without appropriate consideration of
participant actions. This is a critical issue since research has revealed differences in decision-making behaviours when participants
are allowed to regulate their action patterns in situ, compared to when they are asked to verbally report their decisions or use small
micro-movements, such as stepping or pointing in a specific direction (left or right). Alternatively, an ecological dynamics perspective
construes the continuous and dynamic physical interactions between cooperating and competing individuals in team sports and their
performance environments as emanating from the same psychological processes. Ecological dynamics research on team sport
performance has demonstrated how spatio-temporal measures of behaviour, such as angles and distances capturing interrelations
between competing and cooperating performers, and their rates of change, relative to key objects and other individuals in the
performance environment (e.g., goal areas, ball, opponent locations), constrain decision-making. This presentation discusses how
psychological measures of decision-making behaviour do not necessarily have to be construed as internally-located measures in
each individual performer. Rather, theory and research in ecological dynamics suggest that the processes of cognition, perception
and action are immutably intertwined and mutually co-influential in decision-making during team sports performance. This
consideration has implications for understanding performance in team sports suggesting how decision making for action may be
enhanced by by: (i) focusing on the ongoing spatial-temporal interactions of performers and their performance environments; and (ii),
on the information which is used continuously to guide players’ goal-directed behaviours.
European Database of Sport Science (EDSS)
Supported by SporTools GmbH