Perceptual and Motor Skills, 2000,90,543-546. 0 Perceptual and Motor Skills 2000

EXPERTISE IN WOMEN'S GYMNASTIC JUDGING: AN OBSERVATIONAL APPROACH

DIANE M. STE-MARIE

Universify of Ottawa

Summary.-Observation was used to study expercise in gymnastic judging. 10 ex- pert and 10 novice gymnastic judges mere videotaped while judging at actual comperi- dons. Analyses showed that novice judges, as compared to expert judges, spent less time look~ng . I [ the gymnast perform, bpcnr more time looking at the scoring paper, and were Icba able to engage in the dual-task demands required in gymnastic judging.

Within the field of sport studies, research in expertise has focused large- ly on athletes (e.g., Tenenbaum, Levy-Kolker, Sade, Liebermann, & Lidor, 1996; Helsen, Starkes, & Hodges, 1998) and coaches (Cote, Salmela, & Rus- sell, 1995a, 199513). In addition, mostly laboratory-based tasks have been used to capture ddferences between experts and novices (e.g., Abernethy, Neal, & Konig, 1994; Ste-Marie, 1999). The purpose of this study was to investigate differences in behaviors of expert and novice gymnastic judges, an understudied population, while they were engaged in judging actual com- petitions. The two behaviors of interest were direction of gaze and the man- ual recording of the elements of the routine. The search for such behavioral differences in a natural setting are important because they provide informa- tion about the essential attributes that distinguish the expert from the novice (see also French, Spurgeon, & Nevett, 1995). Such knowledge may also pro-

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vide a foundation for training strategies. To investigate the behaviors, 20 women (10 expert and 10 novice gym-

nastic judges), who were certified by Gymnastics Canada, were videotaped while judging competitions in Ontario. The original onsite videotapes were then edited and five routines were transferred to another videotape used for the behavior analysis. The judges' behaviors were analyzed using the behav- ioral evaluation system (BEST) software (Sharpe & Hawkins, 1992). This software provided information concerning mean duration and relative per- centage of the behaviors analyzed.

'Financial support for this project was provided by Sport Canada's Applied Sport Research Program, Policy 94 funds and Research Development Funds from the Faculry of Health Sci- ences and the University Research Committee at the University of Ottawa. I acknowledge for their contribuuons to this study Kavita Prnk;lsh. Elizabeth McSavaney, and Gail Taylor; recogni- tion is also extended those gymnastic utlges who served as participants. Address correspon- dence co Diane M. Ste-Marie, School o / I-luman Kmetics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontar- io KIN 6N5 or e-mail (dstmarie@uottawa.cs). A derailed account has been deposited as Document APD2000-006. Remit $15.00 for photo-

copy to the Archive for Psychological Data, P.O. Box 7922, Missoula, MT 59807-7922.

544 D. M. STE-MARIE

Direction of gaze, measured in seconds, was divided into three behav- iors; l o o h g at the gymnast, the scoring paper, or elsewhere. Analysis show- ed that judges looked at the gymnast significantly longer than at the scoring paper or elsewhere. This depicts the judge giving brief glances to her paper when necessary and quickly returning her gaze to the gymnast, with rare oc- currences of distraction by extraneous events. Novice judges, however, had a significantly shorter mean duration of looking at the gymnast than did ex- pert judges. No differences were evidenced for the remaining two behaviors (refer to Table 1). The inference, then, is that novice judges' visual analysis of the gymnast was more interspersed with quick glances to the paper than by experts.

TABLE 1 MEAN DURATION (SEC.) JUDGES LOOKED AT PAPER, GYMNAST, OR ELSEWHERE

Behavior Experts Novices M SD M SD

Paper 0.41 0.17 0.87 0.47 Gymnast 15.30" 10.80 7.80" 7.80 Elsewhere 0.09 0.30 0.42 0.70

* p < .05.

When considering the relative percentage of time for the direction of gaze behavior, novice judges (M= 13.2%, SD= 9.4) spent a significantly great- er percentage of their time looking at the paper than did expert juclges (M= 2.7%, SD=.3). Consequently, novice judges spent significantly less time watching the performing gymnast (M = 86.3 %, SD = 9.8) than did expert judges (M= 97.2%, SD = 3 .I). This is of significance because a judge who has .

missed 10% of a given performance would lkely have difficulty providing an accurate quantified value for that performance. No ddferences were de- tected in terms of the relative amount of time spent looking elsewhere. Thus, both novice and expert judges were able to remain focused on the task of judging, with distractions within the competition environment being ig- nored.

Gymnastic judges face dual-task demands given that they are required to observe and evaluate a gymnastic performance while simultaneously re- cording the elements being performed. To assess whether there were any dual-task performance differences, the percentage of time the judge was able to write while also watching the gymnast was calculated. By using this per- centage, the time the judge was writing while loolung at the paper was elirni- nated. The total percentage of writing time was used to serve as a contrast with the dual-task measure.

Analysis showed that the expert and novice judges did not M c r in the

EXPERTISE IN GYMNASTIC JUDGING 545

total percentage of time devoted to writing during a routine (M=72.4% and 64.676, respectively). Expert judges (M= 71.4%), however, showed a signifi- cantly greater percentage of dual-task writing than the novice judges (M= 56.8%). Effectively, the expert judges rarely looked at the paper to write, whereas the novice judges d ~ d a larger portion of their writing while looking at the paper.

A number of possibdities can be forwarded to explain this. One possi- bh ty concerns the limited capacity of attention and memory (e.g., Broad- bent, 1958; Baddeley & Ktch , 1974), two cognitive processes required in gymnastic judging (Salrnela, 1978). Novice judges may have coped with the information-processing demands by switching more often to a single-task sit- uation, that is, by l o o h g at the paper while writing. Expert judges, on the other hand, were more able to divide their attention and subsequently show- ed a longer percentage of time engaged in performing the dual-task de- mands. This argument is in h e with Salthouse's proposition (1991) that ex- pertise development can be viewed as learning to circumvent the processing lunitations of a given task.

The differences between expert and novice gymnastic judges found in this research complement those reported by Ste-Marie (1999). Using a labo- ratory based approach to examine various sport-specific cognitive attributes, Ste-Marie noted that expert gymnastic judges were better able perceptually to anticipate upcoming gymnastic elements in a routine and also exhibited greater breadth and depth in their declarative knowledge base than novice judges.

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Accepted March 6, 2000.