Visual span and change detection in soccer: An expertise study

Abstract

There is evidence to suggest that sports experts are able to extract more perceptual information from a single fixation than novices when exposed to meaningful tasks that are specific to their field of expertise. In particular, Reingold et al. (2001) showed that chess experts use a larger visual span including fewer fixations when compared to their less skilled counterparts. The aim of the present study was to examine whether also in a more complex environment, namely soccer, skilled players use a larger visual span and fewer fixations than less skilled players when attempting to recognise players’ positions. To this end, we combined the gaze-contingent window technique with the change detection paradigm. Results seem to suggest that skilled soccer players do not use a larger visual span than less skilled players. However, skilled soccer players showed significantly fewer fixations of longer duration than their less skilled counterparts, supporting the notion that experts may extract more information from a single glance.

Keywords:

• Information pick-up
• Perceptual skills
• Recognition
• Visual span

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Rebecca Rienhoff, Lennart Fischer, Nils Bender, Jan-Micha Hoekstra, Anna Gründel, Jan-Christopher Lüke, Christina Janning, and Katrin Thiele for helping to collect the data. We furthermore thank Janet van Hell, Eyal Reingold, Ron Rensink, and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful and constructive comments in the review process.

This study was supported by a research grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG), code number STR 490/9-1 (GZ).

Notes

¹As watching soccer games on TV was not assessed, it cannot be ruled out that also the participants of the control group may have had some visual experience with soccer. Yet, when we recruited control participants, we only recruited students who reported to have absolutely no practical soccer experience (not even at a recreational level) or familiarity with soccer. We therefore deem it very unlikely that any of the control participants had extensive knowledge of soccer from watching games on TV.