ABSTRACT
Numerous expert-nvice studies have confirmed that expert athletes possess special perceptual-cognitive skills (Mann et al., 2007; Williams et al., 1999). These skills are particularly necessary in racket and ball sports where performance is decisively codetermined by cognitive factors. Perceptual-cognitive skills can be defined as involving a selective intake of information from the surroundings and the use of elaborate memory structures to produce a situationally adequate outcome of play (Mann et al., 2007). The differences in perceptual-cognitive skills between experts and novices have led to the development of specific training interventions designed to improve these skills. Over the past decade, a central focus has been to determine the best way to organize the training of perceptual-cognitive skills and to ascertain how best to transfer the results of laboratory studies on such skills to the field. Training interventions have frequently been carried out in the laboratory where (video) simulations were presented on a PC or a large screen. Athletes view sequences of situations in the field that have typically been recorded from the same perspective as they would take (i.e., a first-person perspective). Typically, these videos stop at a certain stage (temporal occlusion; Abernethy & Russell, 1987), and the athletes have to use the available information (before being supplied with adequate feedback) to either predict the direction of the opponent’s move or indicate what they would do in this situation. The features of the field situation are selected to train special components of perceptual-cognitive skills such as anticipation and decision-making, “quiet eye” behavior, or pattern perception.
