The Effects of Age and Expertise upon Perceptual Skill Development in a Racquet Sport

Abstract

Matched samples of expert and novice badminton players from 12 yrs (n = 12), 15 yrs (n = 14), 18 yrs (n = 8), and adult (n = 55) age groups were tested on a film task designed to simulate the perceptual demands of the sport of badminton. In the first half of the film task subjects were presented with varying degrees of temporal information both leading up to, and following, the opponent's contact with the shuttle and were required to predict the landing position of the shuttle from the information available. The expert group, unlike the novice group, showed a progression to earlier information-extraction as a function of age although it was only at the adult level that the anticipatory performance of the expert players significantly exceeded that of their novice counterparts. In the second half of the film task the display was manipulated by masking visibility to a number of potential sources of advance information. Under these occlusion conditions experts, irrespective of age, were found to extract critical anticipatory information from both the racquet and the arm holding the racquet, whereas novices, of all ages, appeared only capable of using cues arising from the racquet itself. Collectively, these data indicated the presence of systematic differences between the perceptual skills of experts and novices which transcend development age.

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