Utterances as Signals for Sharing Tacit Images in Collective Interaction

Area of Science:

• Sport Psychology
• Team Dynamics
• Motor Learning

Background:

• Effective team performance in ball games relies on shared understanding and unverbalized knowledge among players.
• Coaches need to assess shared mental models to develop successful team tactics.
• Tacit knowledge, or unverbalized ideas, plays a crucial role in collaborative sports.

Purpose of the Study:

• To test the hypothesis that unverbalized image sharing (tacit knowledge) occurs during collective interaction with increased verbal communication.
• To investigate the link between high-frequency utterances and the sharing of tacit knowledge in team handball.

Main Methods:

• Employed a mixed-methods design with 13 male university handball players.
• Recorded problem-solving interactions, quantitatively analyzed utterances to identify high-frequency periods (outliers).
• Qualitatively analyzed outlier periods using consensual qualitative analysis and statistically examined findings with exact binomial tests.

Main Results:

• 22 out of 26 analyzed time periods supported the hypothesis that unverbalized image sharing occurs during collective interaction.
• Periods with extremely high utterances showed a 0.846 ratio (CI = 0.681-1.00, g = 0.80) supporting the hypothesis.
• Tacit image sharing was confirmed to occur during substantial increases in player utterances.

Conclusions:

• Collective interaction, particularly during 'hotspots' of communication, facilitates the sharing of unverbalized images (tacit knowledge).
• This finding suggests a mechanism for how teams develop shared understanding and improve tactical execution.
• The study highlights the importance of verbal communication intensity in fostering implicit knowledge transfer in sports.