The perceptual cognitive processes underpinning skilled performance in volleyball: Evidence from eye-movements and verbal reports of thinking involving an in situ representative task

An extensive body of work has focused on the processes underpinning perceptual-cognitive expertise. the majority of researchers have used film-based simulations to capture superior performance. we combined eye movement recording and verbal reports of thinking to explore the processes underpinning skilled performance in a complex,dynamic,and externally paced representative volleyball task involving in situ data collection. altogether,27 female volleyball players performed as centre backcourt defenders in simulated sessions while wearing an eyetracking device. after each sequence,athletes were questioned concerning their perception of the situation. the visual search strategies employed by the highly-skilled players were more exploratory than those used by skilled players,involving more fixations to a greater number of locations. highly-skilled participants spent more time fixating on functional spaces between two or more display areas,while the skilled participants fixated on the ball trajectory and specific players. moreover,highlyskilled players generated more condition concepts with higher levels of sophistication than their skilled counterparts. findings highlight the value of using representative task designs to capture performance in situ. © journal of sports science and medicine.