The cognitive representation of a throwing technique in judo experts – Technological ways for individual skill diagnostics in high-performance sports

ObjectivesThe paper addresses the cognitive skill representation of a judo technique and presents two examples on how to measure and interpret individual skill profiles based on these representations in high-performance sports.MethodThe cognitive skill representation of a throwing technique in high-level judo experts was tested with the Structure Dimension Analysis - Motorics (SDA-M). This method provides psychometric data on the mental structure and feature dimensions of movement representations in long-term memory. The cognitive units of such representation structures are so-called basic action concepts (BACs), which correspond to functionally meaningful body postures and sub-movements. Participants performed a hierarchical distance scaling (splitting task), in which they sorted a list of BACs according to their functional relevance in movement execution. Through a hierarchical cluster analysis, the SDA-M uncovered the cognitive structures of the throwing technique in participant’s long-term memory, and enabled the assessment of group and individual representations.ResultsExpert skill representations were organized in a distinctive hierarchical tree-like structure, which matched the functional and biomechanical demands of the task well. Also, insights about specific movement problems could be gained for two experts after assessing their individual structures.ConclusionsThe SDA-M method can be used as a diagnostic tool to measure individual skill representations, which helps to improve performance-related instructions and to optimize technical training routines in high-performance sports.