Expert-Novice Differences In Problem Representations And Characteristic Of Sport Thinking In Simulated Competitive Situation In Badminton

Thinking is the focus of cognition in mankind, and there are always problems to be solved by thinking in all kinds of practices in mankind. It is an important domain in cognitive psychology to study the mental representations and characteristic of thinking in problem solving. But in sport psychology, it hardly takes the attentions of researchers. The purposes of the study are to examine the differences in problem representations between expert and novice badminton players in simuated question situations, explore the characteristics of sport thinking of expert badminton players, and try to reveal the nature of sport thinking.The verbal protocols borrowed from cognitive psychology, a method often used to study cognition such as thinking, and a measurement model of verbal protocols in badminton developed in the research are applied. 20 experts in badminton (8 male and 12 female, average age 21) and 22 novices (13 male and 9 female, average age 22) were involved. The expert subjects were professional badminton athlates and had average 12 years in the discipline, 8 experts were ever excellent in world or national badminton competition.Quantitative analysis of verbal data of the experts and novices revealed the following conclusions:1. There were differences in problem representations between expert and novice badminton players in simuated situations.(a) Experts represented more conceptions than novices, they had more total conceptions, condition conceptions, and action conceptions.(b) Experts represented more sophisticated in the structure of conceptions novices. Experts had more goal conceptios directed opponent. And experts had far more condition conceptions based on memory information than that of novices.(c) Experts represented more comprehensive conceptions. And expert had far more "condition-action" conceptions than that of novices.2. The differences in problem representations between expert and novice badminton players revealed the characteristic of sport thinking of experts.(a) Experts were more active in sport thinking, and more tactical and intelligent in problem solving.(b) In the view of information processing, experts were apt to processing by "from upon to down".(c) In the view of development level, experts sport thinking characterized by "productive".3. The differences in problem representations and characteristic of sport thinking between expert and novice badminton players revealed the nature of tactical and intuition of sport thinking in a certain extent.(a) In the view of problem representation, the quantity and hierarchical of condition conception can be applied to assess the tactical thinking.(b) The cue recognition base on the productive thinking in experts can be regarded as the hypothesis to explain the mechanism of intuition in sport thinking.4. The condition-action relationships in problem representations can be taken as the fundamental of sport thinking training to strengthen the intuition in sport.