Visual Exploration When Surrounded by Affordances: Frequency of Head Movements Is Predictive of Response Speed

Abstract

Little is known about the actions supporting exploration and their relation to subsequent actions in situations when participants are surrounded by opportunities for action. Here, the movements that support visual exploration were related to performance in an enveloping football (soccer) passing task. Head movements of experienced football players were quantified with inertial measurement units. In a simulated football scenario, participants completed a receiving–passing task that required them to indicate pass direction to one of four surrounding targets, as quickly as they could after they gained simulated ball possession. The frequency of head movements before and after gaining ball possession and the pass response times were recorded. We controlled exploration time—the time before gaining simulated ball possession—to be 1, 2, or 3 seconds. Exploration time significantly influenced the frequency of head movements, and a higher frequency of head turns before gaining ball possession resulted in faster pass responses. Exploratory action influenced subsequent performatory action. That is, higher frequencies of head movements resulted in faster decisions. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Acknowledgment

The authors thank the club and players for their participation in this study. The authors thank Sarah Gordon for her assistance with data collection and analysis.

Disclosure statement

Thomas McGuckian, Michael Cole, Daniel Chalkley, Geir Jordet, and Gert-Jan Pepping declare that they have no conflicts of interest relevant to the content of this research.

Funding

While completing this research, Thomas McGuckian was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. The funding body had no influence in the planning, execution, or decision to publish this research.

Notes

1 Data were originally collected from 16 participants. Due to an error in data collection, head movement data from four participants could not be used and these four participants were excluded from analysis.

2 Note that this definition of head turn describes a movement of the head relative to space. Therefore, a head movement may (or may not) include rotation of the body relative to space.

3 Since the frequency of head turns when in ball possession was calculated as a function of response time, to prevent biased or specious results due to violation of independence, we performed correlation analysis on response time and the number of head turns when in ball possession.