Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Background The running speed of basketball players plays a critical role in shaping the complexity and dynamics of game situations. This study aims to examine the relationship between players’ tracking speed capabilities and the quality of their decision-making during gameplay. Methods Employing an expert-novice paradigm, Experiment 1 assessed tracking accuracy in a multiple object tracking (MOT) task at three angular velocities: 5°/s, 10°/s, and 15°/s. Experiment 2 evaluated decision-making accuracy under three distinct running speed conditions: low speed (0.67–3.98 m/s), medium speed (3.99–7.97 m/s), and high speed (7.98–12.62 m/s). Results In Experiment 1, expert players demonstrated significantly higher tracking accuracy (60.42 ± 13.98%) than novice players (41.25 ± 13.93%) at 10°/s ( P < 0.001). No significant group differences were found at 5°/s or 15°/s ( Ps > 0.05). In Experiment 2, the expert group exhibited significantly higher decision accuracy than the novice group across all three speed conditions ( Ps < 0.001). Moreover, at high speeds (7.98–12.62 m/s), shooting decisions were significantly less accurate than passing and breakthrough decisions ( Ps < 0.001), while no significant differences were observed between passing and breakthrough decisions ( Ps > 0.05). Conclusion This study shows that expert basketball players display superior visual attention and decision-making in moderate-to-high complexity settings, extending dynamic sport cognition theory. The absence of differences at 5°/s and 15°/s suggests task boundary effects. Future work should examine player position and gender to refine perceptual-cognitive training and theoretical models.
Source: PeerJ
DOI: 10.7717/peerj.20266
Authors: Qifeng Gou, Sunnan Li
Institutions: Northwest Normal University, Beijing Normal University
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,395
Award: G2441159417
OpenAlex ID: W4415421206