Recognition Within the Decision-Making Process: A Case Study of Expert Volleyball Players

Abstract

This article reports on decision-making under time pressure conditions. It aims at testing the Recognition-Primed Decision model with regard to volleyball. Seven male expert players participated in this study. A match was videotaped; each player was interviewed in a self-confrontation interview. Inductive and deductive analysis revealed three main results. The first showed that their decision-making was based on a recognition process of the situation typicality. The second emphasized that this process had four by-products: (a) expectations, (b) relevant cues, (c) plausible goals, and (d) typical action. The players did not equally report these by-products. The third main result showed that the decisions were largely prearranged. They consisted of an association between a typical situation and a typical action, the typical action was then adapted to the current situation. The results are discussed in relation to the Recognition-Primed Decision model and to research that has considered decision-making.

The author is grateful to the players and to the coach of the volleyball team for their participation to this study. The author acknowledges Philippe Fleurance for his participation in the data processing and the students for their participation in the video recording.