Fast and frugal heuristics in sports

International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 2012

How do people make decisions under conditions of limited knowledge, time, and cognitive capacity in real-life situations such as sports? In this review I will introduce the concept of simple heuristics Á rules of thumb that are based on the building blocks of decision making: how to search for information, stop information search, and decide quickly and accurately Á and how they can help us understand the decisions made by athletes, coaches, referees, managers, and fans in tasks involving high uncertainty, such as predicting tournament outcomes, allocating balls to teammates, or determining when to buy or sell a talented player. I will present an 'adaptive toolbox' of such heuristics, that is, a collection of strategies that work effectively in specific environments. Additional building blocks will be added to explain motor behavior itself, which is central to many sport applications. Finally, principles for studying the use of simple heuristics by people involved in sports will be presented to guide future applications.

Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 2006

Objectives: The purpose of this article is to provide an introduction to the theoretical, practical, and methodological advantages of applying cognitive models to sports decisions. The use of sequential sampling models, in particular, is motivated by their correspondence with the dynamic, variable processes that characterize decision-making in sports. This article offers a brief yet detailed description of these process models, and encourages their use in research on decision-making in sports. In addition, Appendix A provides the sufficient detail to formulate, simulate, and compute predictions for one of these models. Although the formulation focuses primarily on deliberation among a set of options, incorporating other critical task components (e.g. option generation, learning) is contemplated. Conclusions.: Empirical evidence is reviewed that supports the use of sequential sampling models over other approaches to decision-making. Finally, future directions for fine tuning these models to the sports domain are discussed. r

International Journal of Sports Science, 2015

In dynamic situations such as sports, athletes use environmental information to compare the current situation with similar situations in the past. On the basis of this experience a recognized option will be generated and chosen . We evaluated decision making in team handball by tracking the eye movements of participants during the decision-making process. We performed two studies using the same sample that differed in the format of visual presentation. In Study 1 we presented different offensive scenes on a virtual tactic board via a computer screen. In Study 2, the participants watched real decision-making situations in a large video projection on a wall. The same participants took part in both studies (i.e., experienced both formats). The studies were intended to extend previous research on the take-the-first heuristic (limited cue use and limited option generation). An option-generation paradigm was used to measure choice behavior in participants with high and low expertise levels. Results of Study 1 showed that all participants produced nearly the same gaze behavior but experts generated options with a higher probability of success. In Study 2 we conceptually validated the effect in more complex situations. Benefits of that information search and choice behavior are explained based on a simple heuristics approach, and practical recommendations are provided.

Background: Successful decision-making in sport requires good decisions to be made quickly, but little is understood about the decision process under stress. Objective: The purpose of this study was to compare decision outcomes and the Take the First (TTF) heuristic under conditions of mental, physical, and no stress. Method: Participants (N=112) were divided into 3 stress groups: mental stress (mental serial subtraction), physical stress (running on treadmill at 60-70% of maximum effort), and no stress (counting backwards by 1). Participants were exposed to 30 seconds of stress and then watched a video depicting an offensive situation in basketball requiring them to decide what the player with the ball should do next. Each participant performed 10 trials of the video decision-making task. Results: No differences were found between the 3 stress groups on decision quality, TTF frequency, number of options generated, or quality of first generated option. However, participants in the no stress and physical stress conditions were faster in generating their first option and making their final decision as compared to the mental stress group. Conclusion: Overall, results suggest that mental stress impairs decision speed and that TTF is an ecologically rationale heuristic in dynamic, time-pressured situations.

Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 2019

Objectives: The study of judgment and decision-making in sports is at least as old as the anniversary of FEPSAC we celebrate with this special issue. It seems therefore appropriate to look into the past, present and future of this topic. Design: For the past, a focus of the review is relating the European perspective of the co-authors into a larger frame of areas in judgment and decision making within the last 50 years and beyond. Method/Results/Conclusions: For the present, scientific current developments will be structured as judgments from the most influential perspectives such as the economical, social cognition, ecological dynamics or cognitive approaches illustrating some milestones in research on judgment and decision-making in sports of today. For the future, potentials of the field will be structured based on theory, methodology and practical applications showcasing challenges for the next decades of research ahead of us.

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 2012

Can taking the first (TTF) option in decision-making lead to the best decisions in sports contexts? And, is one's decision-making self-efficacy in that context linked to TTF decisions? The purpose of this study was to examine the role of the TTF heuristic and self-efficacy in decision-making on a simulated sports task. Undergraduate and graduate students (N ϭ 72) participated in the study and performed 13 trials in each of two video-based basketball decision tasks. One task required participants to verbally generate options before making a final decision on what to do next, while the other task simply asked participants to make a decision regarding the next move as quickly as possible. Decision-making self-efficacy was assessed using a 10-item questionnaire comprising various aspects of decision-making in basketball. Participants also rated their confidence in the final decision. Results supported many of the tenets of the TTF heuristic, such that people used the heuristic on a majority of the trials (70%), earlier generated options were better than later ones, first options were meaningfully generated, and final options were meaningfully selected. Results did not support differences in dynamic inconsistency or decision confidence based on the number of options. Findings also supported the link between self-efficacy and the TTF heuristic. Participants with higher self-efficacy beliefs used TTF more frequently and generated fewer options than those with low self-efficacy. Thus, not only is TTF an important heuristic when making decisions in dynamic, time-pressure situations, but self-efficacy plays an influential role in TTF.

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition

Heuristics are simple, yet effective, strategies that people use to make decisions. Because heuristics do not require all available information, they are thought to be easy to implement and to not tax limited cognitive resources, which has led heuristics to be characterized as fast-and-frugal. We question this monolithic conception of heuristics by contrasting the cognitive demands of two popular heuristics, Tallying and Take-the-Best. We contend that heuristics that are frugal in terms of information usage may not always be fast because of the attentional control required to implement this focus in certain contexts. In support of this hypothesis, we find that Take-the-Best, while being more frugal in terms of information usage, is slower to implement and fares worse under time pressure manipulations than Tallying. This effect is then reversed when search costs for Take-the-Best are reduced by changing the format of the stimuli. These findings suggest that heuristics are heterogeneous and should be unpacked according to their cognitive demands to determine the circumstances a heuristic best applies.

RICYDE. Revista Internacional de Ciencias del Deporte. doi: 10.5232/ricyde, 2012

Resumen Research on decision-making in sport has received increasing attention by sport scientists during the last decade (Araújo, 2011). In fact we see that different theoretical perspectives, methodologies (García-Gonzalez, Araújo, Carvalho & del Villar, 2011; Williams & Abernethy, 2012), and applications to training (Ibáñez-Gijón, Travieso, Jacobs, 2011, Carvalho, Araújo, García-Gonzalez & Iglesias, 2011; Causer, Janelle, Vickers & Williams, 2012; Davids, Araújo, Hristovski, Passos & Chow, 2012) are very consolidated. ...

PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2007

The study of judgment and decision making (JDM) can be traced back to the late 1940s, evidenced by three major, quite independent approaches: decision-and game-theoretical, psychological, and social-psychological/sociological. Since then, JDM has been studied by researchers from many disciplines, who are especially attuned to the distinctive, yet interrelated facets of the normative and descriptive characterizations of JDM processes (Over, 2004). Judgments within the JDM tradition have been defined as ''a set of evaluative and inferential processes that people have at their disposal and can draw on in the process of making decisions'' (Koehler & Harvey, 2004, preface xv). Often, however, these judgments should be separated from the consequences of the decision itself, whereas for decision-making processes the consequences are crucial. The main focus of decision-making research lies in the understanding of choices between a set of options. The broad distinction between judgments and decision-making will be used to map the articles presented in this volume. Normative theories (for a review, see Baron, 2004) are based on postulates that enable one's optimal maximization of gain and minimization of loss, and are concerned with prescribing human JDM behavior. However, since the introduction of the ''bounded rationality'' concept by Nobel Prize winner Herbert Simon (1955), the area of JDM has been heavily ''psychologized,'' turning its major focus to more descriptive characterizations of how real people actually behave. Following the seminal work by Meehl (1954) on the differences between clinical and statistical prediction, it has been repeatedly demonstrated that human JDM behavior departs substantially from normative prescriptions. Consequently, the JDM psychology has focused on the gaps between the ideal (i.e., normative) and real (i.e., descriptive) facets of JDM, in an attempt to understand their causes. Currently, JDM is conceived to a large degree in terms of human information processing and is mostly regarded as part of cognitive and social psychology (as is evident from the different approaches to JDM included in Koehler and Harvey (2004). Almost none of this has been reflected in the sport psychology literature. According to Tenenbaum (2003), the first seminal publication on cognitive sport psychology was Straub and Williams' (1984) collection of theoretical and applied book chapters. In one of the chapters in this volume, Gilovich (1984) stated that the world of sport is most appropriate for JDM research, because it is a potential laboratory for the study of cognitive processes associated with human