Characterising expert representations during real-time action: A Skill Theory application to soccer

Abstract

In various domains, experts are found to possess elaborate domain-specific representations they developed over years. In this study, we provide the first systematic attempt to characterise the short-term representations among individuals with different expertise levels. We showed videos of soccer game plays to expert, near-expert and non-expert soccer players and asked them to describe the actions taking place. Verbalisations were coded based on Fischer's Skill Theory. Monte Carlo permutation tests revealed that players with higher expertise constructed representations of higher complexity (regardless of their specific content). Taking the content of the representations into account, we found that higher expertise soccer players relatively more often included high complexity levels of actions not including the ball and (moving) players on the field. These findings improve our understanding of perceptual-cognitive expertise by demonstrating how actors with different levels of expertise integrate the information they perceive to construct their representations in real time.

Keywords:

• Expertise
• Monte Carlo permutation
• Perceptual-cognitive skills
• Verbalised descriptions

Notes

¹ Note that the Levels 8–10 were not taken into account, because these levels go beyond single abstractions, which is virtually impossible for this specific task (i.e., describing single game plays does not require linking multiple abstractions).

² Earlier researchers particularly analysed the number of described actions or contents involved in game plays (e.g., McPherson, 2000; Roca et al., 2011). The counts of described actions and game elements also revealed significant differences between the three groups in the current study, although less striking than the differences in the complexity scores. The results of the counts are available upon request.