COGNITION IN ELITE FOOTBALLERS STUDY

 

2 - 3 times a year I come across a study that's about 25 pages long that sucks me in and I have to read it word-for-word while I'm typing out notes from it which than cuts it down to about 10 pages and this study did just that (29 into 14 pages to be specific!)

As usual this study is based on soccer but everything translates to footy, and any team invasion sport.

To be able to coach something you first need to know what it actually is and the processes behind otherwise you're guessing and/or not following evidenced-based coaching practices.

What I'll also add is a list of new terms and what they mean to help guide you through this post series.

Cognition - is the ongoing, active maintenance of player-environment interactions, achieved by closely coordinated perception and action.

Action Selection/Execution - the movement selected by the player to solver the current problem presented to them/the final action of that proposed selection.

Outcome Assessment - the final result of the action selected based on the expectations you had of it.

Perception-Action Cycle - you perceive to move and you move to perceive meaning you see an action you can take, you take it and from that previous action new action possibilities present themselves.

Visual Orientation/Attention - your ability to perceive and interpret the action around you/what actions you choose to focus on.

Pattern Recognition - the ability to recognise in-game patterns of teammates and opposition.

Anticipation - the ability to predict pattern of play based of pattern recognition/experience and thus being able to react earlier then other teammates and opposition.

Working Memory - is where the most current information sits your memory bank of which only somewhere between 3 - 6 chunks of information can be held at a time before it becomes overloaded and something drops out and/or system fatigue stars to increase. If information is retrieved optimally then it can be moved to long term memory where retrieval has far less resource cost.

Perceptual Updating - You see a potential action and you start to act on it but the environment changes mid-action, you perceive this in real-time and alter your next action as a result of it.

Exploratory Behavior - refers to performing in an environment that is unstable or unfamiliar, and thus cannot be predicted beforehand

Auditory/Somatosensation/Proprioception - verbal/all senses such as touch, pain, temperature, body position and balance/movement, action and location in space

This will take 5 or so posts to get through so here's the introduction + the characteristics of stage 1.

• There are 3 functional stages of cognition being situation assessment, action selection/execution and outcome assessment that all form a perception-action cycle that corresponds to a single play situation
• The main cognitive processes are visual orientation/attention, pattern recognition, anticipation, working memory, action selection/decision making, executive control processes + behavioral/cognitive learning
• If you have the ball you can pass, shoot or dribble
• If you don’t have the ball you tackle, block the ball/running course of opposition or move to another part of the field for defensive/attacking purposes
• The typical duration of a single play is a few seconds which allows for some perceptual updating/response preparation within the situation
• The model works in a cascading way where earlier stages continue to be active during the processing at later stages and can influence the result until an action has been executed
• Stage 1 continues to deliver information about the current play situation during the process at stage 2 which can lead to inhibition of action if circumstances change halfway
• There are also feedback connections between stage 2/1 so the process of action selection can initiate new exploratory behavior before an action is decided upon/fully executed
• Several processes within stages also occur in parallel such as the selection between response actions during stage 2
• Although the model as a whole has a serial processing character, it encompasses parallel/interactive processes both within and between the 3 stages with each stage depending on specific cognitive processes as we'll see below
• STAGE 1 provides the player with a continuous assessment of the current play situation via visual perception but also auditory, somatosensation and proprioception, all intimately connected to attentional functions which direct focus towards particular aspects of the situation
• Attentional focus is supported/elaborated by active exploratory movements, in particular visual orienting, and relies heavily on previous learning
• Much of the orienting processes occur at an automatic cognitive level but conscious intentions can also influence the player's behavior via executive control processes
• Sport specific pattern recognition refers to configurations of the surrounding players in relation to the ball and is a central aspect to stage 1
• Anticipations of the actions of the other players are an integral part of the situation assessment such as basing on postural positions of teammates/opposition
• The outcome of stage 1 is a dynamically updated assessment of the current play situation including anticipations of the immediate future which is represented in the player's working memory