The Characteristics Of Slalom Athletes' Decision-making Under Pressure Situations

Decision-making in sports is a cognitive process,in which winning goal is concerned and proper behaviors are chosen.It is an important domain of cognitive psychology.The purpose of this study is to examine the differences in decision-making between expert and novice slalom athletes under pressure situation,and explore characteristics of slalom athletes' decision-making under high pressure.The verbal protocol is a method borrowed from cognitive psychology often used to study cognition.We analyzed the decisions of slalom experts and novices between competitive and training situations.In the research, 20 experts(10 male and 10 female,average age 20) and 20 novices(10 male and 10 female,average age 19) were involved.All of them came from national slalom team.The experts team had average 5 years in professional discipline,novices had half an year on average.The following conclusions were drawn from quantitative analysis of verbal data and decision of reconstruction accuracy of the experts and novices under different situations:(1) The decision of reconstruction accuracy of slalom experts is better than that of novices.Significant differences existed between the decision of reconstruction accuracy of athletes of different levels under different pressure situations:the decision of reconstruction accuracy of the experts under high pressure is worse than that under low pressure, the decision of reconstruction accuracy of the novices under high pressure is better than that under low pressure.(2) More athletes' knowledge was retrieved under high pressure,and more information of targets was activated and information evaluated was processed in decision-making.Concerning for irrelevant information might disturb decision-making under high pressure.The athletes made more effort to make sure the behaviors and processes efficient,but this kind of effort may also make automated information processing impeded.(3) The experts showed more "pass by door" behavior decisions under high pressure.In the process of decision-making,experts activated more negative information evaluation under high pressure,but novices activated more positive information evaluation.(4) Either experts or novices under low pressure showed more concern for the targets of technical ability and more skill selection technical ability than under high pressure.(5) The performance under two kinds of situations was mainly related to result target and information evaluation of control,particularly to the control of evaluation of the negative information.The more result expectation and negative information selection,the more negative affection occurred to performance under high pressure.