Guiding Visual Attention in Decision Making—Verbal Instructions Versus Flicker Cueing

Perceptual-cognitive processes play an important role in open, fast-paced, interceptive sports such as tennis, basketball, and soccer (e.g., Davids, Savelsbergh, Bennett, & van der Kamp, 2002). Visual information processing has been shown to distinguish skilled from less skilled athletes (Williams, Davids, & Williams, 1999). Research on the perceptual demands of sports performance has raised questions regarding athletes’ visual information pick-up, including where and when they pick up relevant information. Advance cues (Abernethy, 1993) and information rich areas (Magill, 1998) have been identified as especially relevant. In studies examining the effectiveness of programs designed to train athletes in sport-specific perceptual strategies of information pick-up (Ward, Williams, & Hancock, 2006), researchers reported positive effects of sport-specific perceptual and decision-making training programs (Williams & Ward, 2003). However, the results did not indicate whether verbal or visual instructions guided attention more efficiently to the information rich areas. Investigators studying the effects of different instructional methods on perceptual (Jackson & Farrow, 2005) and motor learning (e.g., Janelle, Champenoy, Coombes, & Mousseau, 2003) examined effective methods of guiding athletes’ visual attention to the highly relevant parameters of play (e.g., to predict the ball flight direction in tennis). Due to the high amount of visual information in sports, athletes must learn the specific visual cues they need to successfully anticipate and perform tasks. In this context, studies have shown that directing attention efficiently is a critical skill for peak performance in sports (Abernethy, 2001), although they do not identify which instruction method is most effective in improving perceptual and decision-making capabilities. Explicit instructions might not be the most effective method in the acquisition of perceptual-cognitive skills. Smeeton, Williams, Hodges, and Ward (2005) examined the effectiveness of three instructional methods—explicit instructions, guided discovery, and discovery learning techniques—in anticipation skill improvements in tennis using a laboratory and a transfer test setting. Anticipation skill decision times and response accuracies were measured and analyzed. All three instructional methods resulted in enhanced anticipation skills compared to a control group. However, under stress-provoking conditions the explicit group performed significantly worse than the other two instructional groups. Furthermore, the guided discovery method resulted in more rapid initial improvements in performance than discovery learning. As a result, the authors recommended the guided discovery method for permanent and stress-resistant perceptual-cognitive learning effects. In addition, decision-making strategies based on perceptual information might be more robust and effective than cognitive-based strategies (Kirlik, Walker, Fisk, & Nagel, 1996). Kirlik et al. (1996) investigated the effects of different attention-guiding methods in the development of American football decision-making skills. They compared perceptual training interventions that highlighted important visual features for decision making with explicit instructions (i.e., rules) that informed the participants about critical play patterns. The visually guided group showed more improvements than the explicitly instructed group, which suggests the acquisition of decision-making skills might benefit more from perceptual guiding strategies than explicit instructions. Guiding Visual Attention in Decision Making—Verbal Instructions Versus Flicker Cueing