Kick it like Ballack: The effects of goalkeeping gestures on goal-side selection in experienced soccer players and soccer novices

Abstract

The present experiment on soccer penalty kicking investigates the influence of goalkeeping gestures on goal-side selection in experienced soccer players and novices. Facing a penalty situation, participants viewed a goalkeeper and a soccer goal. In the action selection task, they kicked to the wider side of the goal, whereas in the perception task, they gave a verbal response to indicate the position of the goalkeeper. To this end, the goalkeeper was displaced at different distances to the left or right of the goal centre and depicted either in a regular goalkeeping posture, or with a pointing gesture to the left or right. Results showed that the goalkeeper's position on the goal line systematically affected goal-side selection in both experienced players and novices. Participants kicked to the wider goal side more often in the action selection task, even when they were not aware of the displacement in the perception task. Performance was further influenced by the goalkeeping gesture, with more kicks directed opposite to the pointing direction. These effects were stronger for novices. It is concluded that the simultaneous processing of implicit and explicit stimulus information influences goal-side selection in soccer penalty shooting.

Keywords:

• Gestures
• Implicit action priming
• Soccer penalty
• Sports performance

Acknowledgments

The data were collected with the help of the student researchers Boris Busalt (Heidelberg) and Sebastian Steingräber (Bielefeld). Their help is much appreciated. We also would like to thank Matt Dicks for his valuable comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

Notes

¹The level of participants’ expertise was not stated in the study of Masters et al. (2007). After contacting the authors, we found out that the participants tested were soccer novices (D. Memmert, personal communication, 22 June 2012).

²Participants were tested at two testing sites, one being in Bielefeld and the other in Heidelberg. Both test populations consisted of an equal number of experienced soccer players and soccer novices, which were of similar sex, age, and level of expertise. All data were carefully checked for potential influences of testing site. However, the pattern of results was identical for both test sites, showing no statistical differences for the dependent variables between the Bielefeld and Heidelberg data, neither for the action selection task, nor the perception task. We therefore collapsed all data over the factor testing site and only refer to the participants as to a single test population.

³Unfortunately, this pattern of results cannot be compared to the results of Masters et al. (2007), because these authors never presented the goalkeeper in the exact middle of the goal, even though participants were asked to kick only if they perceived the goalkeeper to be standing in goal centre (Experiment 3). Thus, participants were instructed to respond to an experimental condition that was actually not included in the experiment. It can only be speculated that, on some occasions, participants would not have responded, even if the authors had displayed the goalkeeper in the middle. This hypothetical result would be similar to the finding of perceptual variability in the present experiment.