NEXT LEVEL COACHING – DECISION MAKING DURING GAMES – PLAYER/TEAM PERCEPTION (PART 2/4)

                                       

NEW TERMS

Self Organisation - refers to how a player organises their movements and actions within a disorgainised situation, with this ability enhanced with increasing exposures to the same or similar scenarios

Implicit Coupling - unguided perception/action coupling

Heuristic Decision Making - what has worked before

Fast Thought - game decisions and actions made with some in-the-game information but mostly with of-the-game information

Haptic Information - the understanding of information through the sense of touch

• The application of decision making processes at an individual level may depend on the demands of different game moments
• Specific game situations may demand a player’s use of meaningful cognitive mechanisms to make decisions such as the time and options offered to players by game situations that may demand an implicit coupling of perception and action resulting in self organisation, intuition and heuristic driven decision making, the diagnosis of limited options rapidly, the deliberate evaluation of situational probability and the mental rehearsal of possible courses of action
• At times, rehearsal of actions allow players to act accordingly where the game model expectations are that player/s will be in a specific position at a specific time without even needing to look
• Players form expectations of situations from their perception of the game situation and their knowledge of the game but expectations are frequently unmet so players tended to take the 1^st option available to them which is evident in fast thought decision making where knowledge in the game is referred to consistently
• Player perceptual sources include presenting visual, verbal and haptic information whose use is predicted on the positions they play and the game situation and whilst most decisions within open play are actuated by global and discrete visual information, players also perceive verbal information from teammates, especially in the backline
• In scrums players mostly refer on the perception of haptic information to make decisions such as the conscious awareness of the strength of their physical scrimmaging position and the bind between themselves, their teammates and the opposition, actuating their decision making process
• Player’s perception of information is guided by their physical and technical capability to act
• Despite players indicating that they had decided on feel and through reaction, they often impressed wider knowledge of what was required to satisfy the situation which can show evidence for a direct and enactive relationship between perception and action within the decision making process and that even in situations where players are denied access to conscious thought, neural embodiments of meaning stored as representations allow for players to satisfy the demands of the game situation, also suggesting players had an instinct of what was the right  thing to do given the game situation

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