Abstract

A series of experiments conducted on the raquet sports of badminton and squash are described in which the intent was a) to determine the location of the advance cues which provide critical anticiptory information and b) to document any expert-novice differences in anticipatory cue usage. The latter was seen as important as a possible window towards understanding perceptual learning. Critical anticipatory cues were determined through examination of the decrements in prediction accuracy which were induced by selective temporal and spatial occlusion of the normal display of the opponents preparatory and striking actions while visual search strategies were determined from concurrent eye movement recording. Both levels of analysis suggested movement of the arm and racquet and outward flight of the struck ball (or shuttle) as the source of the critical cues for racquet sports and a close match was found between the visual search sequence and the proximal-to-distal kinematic development of the opponents stroke. Expert raquet sport players were found to differ from novices in terms of their ability to use the earlier occuring, more proximal arm cues as a basis for predicting resultant stroke speed and direction but these differences in information pick-up were not matched by differences in visual search strategy. Further experiments are described in which the development of anticipatory skill is mapped across experts and novices drawn from three junior age. Verf.-Referat (gekuerzt)