Mental Arousal、impact On Sport Decision-making Ability

This study is an experimental study on the factors affecting the sport intuitivedecision-making ability. We selected mental arousal as a likely factor. We first reviewed theconcepts and existing research on mental arousal, and introduced the selected mental arousalintensity–direction model. Afterwards, we reviewed definitions and related research onintuitive decision-making.In order to select a more scientific and reasonable method of measuring the movementintuitive decision-making ability, we studied the selection of the measurement, and selected asimulated soccer penalty gatekeeping scenario to optimize the measurement of the sportintuitive decision-making ability. Subjects played the role of goalkeepers and were instructedto judge whether the incoming soccer ball was coming from the "left, right, or themiddle". The study went on to carry out preliminary experiments and validation on subjects’reactions, and finally selected400ms as a cutoff criterion for the subjects’ response time. Thatis, the subjects have400ms between the initial movement of the ball and the decisionregarding the ball’s incoming direction. If the cutoff time were exceeded, the session wouldbe regarded as a failed attempt.Next, out of needs of the implementation and taping the experiments, we designed,developed and evaluated a system called the Simulated Soccer Penalty Gatekeeping ScenarioSport Intuitive Decision-Making Testing System. The results showed that the reliability andvalidity of this system satisfied the experimental requirements.We used the Expert-Novice research paradigm and studied the subjects’Sport IntuitiveDecision-Making Ability under the Mental Arousal Intensity–Direction model. The resultsshow that:(1) For Novice subjects, Mental Arousal’s direction has an important impact on theirachievement scores. The positive arousal group performed significantly better than thenegative arousal group. The influence from the intensity of Mental Arousal alone did notreach significance, but the interaction between the intensity and the direction has a significantimpact.(2) For the Expert subjects, Mental Arousal’s direction also has an important impact ontheir achievement scores. The positive arousal group performed significantly better than thenegative arousal group. The intensity of Mental Arousal also reached significance, i.e. the lowarousal group performed significantly better than the high arousal group. The interactionbetween intensity and direction did not yield a significant impact.(3) The Novice subjects’ performance scores in the positive-high arousal andpositive-low arousal conditions are significantly higher than the baseline condition. TheExpert subjects’performance scores in all treatment conditions is equal to or better than theirbaseline conditions.(4) In positive-high arousal and positive-low arousal conditions, the performance scoresimprovements of the Expert subjects are significantly higher than the degree to which theNovice scores improved.