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Field dependence-independence in complex motor skills.
Aymeric Guillot1, Christian Collet
1Centre de Recherche et d'Innovation sur le Sport Université Claude Bernard Lyon I, France.
Perceptual and Motor Skills
|May 15, 2004
Summary
Athletes in acrobatic sports demonstrate greater field independence compared to racket sport athletes. This cognitive trait is crucial for complex motor skills and decision-making in sports requiring athletes to distinguish key elements from their background.
Area of Science:
- Sports Science
- Cognitive Psychology
- Motor Skill Acquisition
Background:
- Complex motor skills in sports rely on processing external (exteroceptive) and internal (proprioceptive) sensory information.
- Athletes must often disembed critical elements like themselves, teammates, or the ball from the surrounding environment for effective decision-making.
- Cognitive restructuring is a key component of performance in sports demanding sophisticated spatial awareness and focus.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the relationship between field dependence-independence and complex motor skills in athletes.
- To determine if cognitive styles differ between athletes participating in acrobatic sports versus individual racket sports.
- To explore the influence of expertise, sex, and age on field dependence-independence in elite athletes.
Main Methods:
- The Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) was administered to assess field dependence-independence.
- Participants included 26 acrobatic athletes (gymnastics, trampoline, etc.) and 26 racket sport athletes (tennis, table-tennis).
- All participants had at least 10 years of sports practice, aged 16–35 years.
Main Results:
- No significant differences in field dependence-independence scores were found based on expertise level, sex, or age.
- Athletes in acrobatic sports achieved significantly higher GEFT scores, indicating greater field independence.
- Tennis and table-tennis players obtained lower scores, suggesting a tendency towards field dependence.
Conclusions:
- Field independence is a distinguishing cognitive characteristic more prevalent in acrobatic athletes than in racket sport athletes.
- This cognitive style appears to be associated with the demands of specific sport disciplines, particularly those requiring enhanced spatial perception and disembedding abilities.
- The findings suggest that cognitive traits like field independence may play a role in the selection and success of athletes in different sport categories.