The influence of basketball players' tracking speed ability on sports decision performance

The running speed of basketball players plays a critical role in shaping the complexity and dynamics of game situations. This study aims to examine the relationship between players' tracking speed capabilities and the quality of their decision-making during gameplay.

Employing an expert-novice paradigm, Experiment 1 assessed tracking accuracy in a multiple object tracking (MOT) task at three angular velocities: 5°/s, 10°/s, and 15°/s. Experiment 2 evaluated decision-making accuracy under three distinct running speed conditions: low speed (0.67-3.98 m/s), medium speed (3.99-7.97 m/s), and high speed (7.98-12.62 m/s).

In Experiment 1, expert players demonstrated significantly higher tracking accuracy (60.42 ± 13.98%) than novice players (41.25 ± 13.93%) at 10°/s (P < 0.001). No significant group differences were found at 5°/s or 15°/s (Ps > 0.05). In Experiment 2, the expert group exhibited significantly higher decision accuracy than the novice group across all three speed conditions (Ps < 0.001). Moreover, at high speeds (7.98-12.62 m/s), shooting decisions were significantly less accurate than passing and breakthrough decisions (Ps < 0.001), while no significant differences were observed between passing and breakthrough decisions (Ps > 0.05).

This study shows that expert basketball players display superior visual attention and decision-making in moderate-to-high complexity settings, extending dynamic sport cognition theory. The absence of differences at 5°/s and 15°/s suggests task boundary effects. Future work should examine player position and gender to refine perceptual-cognitive training and theoretical models.