Research On Characteristics Of Map Cognizing And Processing And Skill Training Of Orienteers

As a kind of intelligent sports,orienteering is distinctive,because highly cognitive and highly physical components are both needed.In recent years,this sport developed rapidly and is well loved by people.There are over 3000 students,including college students,middle school students and pupils,participating in national events such as National Student Orienteering Championships and National Orienteering Championships each year,the number of entries being next only to track and field events.There are 17 qualified colleges to enroll high-level orienteers in China.In 2004,Chinese Orienteering National Team was established,which sends teams to participate in the Asian Orienteering Championships,world Orienteering Championships and other world events every year.With the development of orienteering,researchers not only study about the teaching and physical quality of orienteering and so on,but also pay more attention to cognitive function.Map reading is the most important skill in orienteering.In the process of map reading,not all information included in the map has navigation function,which requires orienteers to efficiently search the information related to route decision from a large number of map symbols.This kind of visual search ability mainly depends on the player's memory storage and extraction on information.In fact,map reading is the process of cognition and decision-making that the map information is inputted,encoded,stored and extracted in individual psychological system.It is crucial for orienteers and coaches to obtain the fixation information and cognitive processing characteristics of players in map reading.Some studies have proved that excellent athletes are well provided with special cognitive advantages,which can be consolidated and improved through purposeful training.However,limited by experimental conditions and research techniques,people have not conducted the systematic research and scientific explanation on the characteristics of map reading,cognizing and deciding of orienteering.In this study,the process of sports decision cognizing and processing was taken as the main line;the orienteering competitions' maps were used as the experimental material;the form “expert-novice” was adopted;and eye movement recording methods,recall and recognition methods,experimental comparison and other methods were used.It made a comprehensive study on three interrelated links of visual search,working memory storage and extraction in the process of cognition and decision-making,and analyzed the special cognitive characteristics of orienteers with different levels.Therefore,excellent orienteers' cognitive processing strategies could be summarized.On this basis,the paper discussed the performance of cognitive skill training,which could provide behavioral indicators for further evaluation and training of orienteers' cognitive skill.Meanwhile,it contributed to broaden the research boundary of cognition and decision-making in sports field.The results showed that:(1)according to the different techniques of map reading,players showed different visual search features.In the process of general drawing: experts showed the eye movement characteristics of short fixation time,few fixation times,small saccade distance,simple attention trajectory and small attention area,and they tended to search from the controls.Instead,the middle group and novice group tended to begin from the start;in the process of precise drawing: experts showed the different eye movementcharacteristics of many fixation times and large search range of target area.Both experts and middle-level orienteers paid attention to the label information(controls list),except for novice group,and experts noticed more information.The orienteers' ability of route decision-making was inversely proportional to the difficulty of map and the amount of information.(2)In the process of memory storage of map reading,novice could only remember 2 information points at most whether in simple tasks or in complex tasks;the middle-level orienteers could exactly remember 3 information points in simple tasks,but still2 information points in complex tasks;experts could exactly remember 4 information points in simple tasks and 3 information points in complex tasks;in the process of memory extraction of map reading,the expert group showed a higher level in the process of memory recognizing and conversing.The orienteers in middle group possessed the same recognition ability on the information of basic map symbols as orienteers in expert group.But there were some differences between the two groups in the conversion ability of the game map;both in recognition ability on map's basic symbol information and in conversion ability of map information memory,there was a big difference among the novice group with the middle-level group and the expert group.(3)From the study on the training of map-reading skill in orienteering: through combining the special video simulation training,recognition memory training of map scene with the knowledge teaching,the orienteering special memory scores,the test scores of completing prescribed route in experimental class were remarkably higher than that of the regular class;however,the map reading frequency and time as well as the proportion of travel distance and straight-line distance in experimental class were remarkably lower than that of the regular class.Main conclusions:(1)In the process of map reading,excellent orienteers had the cognitive advantages of strong decision-making ability and fast search speed.They showed the backward thinking characteristic that was from the control to the start,the search characteristic of “bottom-up”goal-driven and the attention characteristic of integrity processing.Working memory load affected the processing efficiency of orienteers' visual search.(2)The memory ability of orienteers was restricted by special knowledge and task situation.Excellent orienteers had higher memory storage capacity and memory extraction advantage on special map information.Under the conditions of simple task and complex task,their memory storage capacity were 4 information points and 3 information points respectively,which showed the memory storage characteristic of attack point oriented and the memory extraction characteristic of multi information integration.(3)The combination of special video simulation training and recognition memory training of map scene with knowledge teaching can improve orienteering novices' ability of special memory.It also improves the accuracy of route-deciding and performances of the orienteers in actual competitions.