ABSTRACT
We investigated the influence of providing football goalkeepers with kicker’s prior preferences on anticipation and gaze behaviour to explore the interaction of top-down and bottom-up cognitive processing. Forty participants (20 experienced goalkeepers and 20 novices) were asked to anticipate the direction of penalty kicks in three experimental conditions: without information (control situation), with correct information (congruent condition), and with wrong information (incongruent condition) on a kicker’s prior preferences. An eye-tracking device was used to analyse fixations on areas of interest. The participants anticipated the direction of the kick in congruent situations better than in the other two conditions (p = 0.001). Experienced goalkeepers were superior to novices in the incongruent and control conditions (p = 0.001). In those conditions, experienced goalkeepers also fixated more (p = 0.025) and longer (p = 0.046) on the trunk, and longer on the hips (p = 0.036), non-kicking leg (p = 0.001), and kicking leg (p = 0.001). We conclude that providing congruent information on a kicker’s preferences positively impacts goalkeepers’ anticipation. This confirms a model that expertise differences between experienced goalkeepers and novices are more prominent when the interaction of bottom-up and top-down processes is difficult.
Data availability statement
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Ethics approval
The study was approved by the local Ethics committee (CAAE 10725119.0.0000.5149). No IRB approval need.
All authors declare no support from any organisation for the submitted work and no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work.
Notes
1 See https://www.fifa.com/worldcup/news/the-piece-of-paper-that-helped-germany-turn-the-page-2811265 (retrieved June 25, 2020).