Breadth and depth of knowledge in expert versus novice athletes

This chapter discusses the complex open sports, reliance on knowledge is often treated with some suspicion by elite athletes and coaches, and ambivalent attitudes to expert knowledge are also apparent in the theories. The complex, highly structured, culturally embedded worlds of elite sport afford extraordinary opportunities for cognitive scientists to study the mind in action. The tasks posed in professional sport are extremely diverse, and both the role and the application of expert knowledge will likely vary widely. Terminology in this area can be confusing, and the utility of the term “knowledge” in this context is not secure: a richer vocabulary would be welcome. The well-established expert advantages in perceptual anticipation, such that experts attend to relevant advance cues and can predict the time course of events earlier and more accurately, are not isolated from cognition, but spring from and, in turn, test and update the experts’ elaborated knowledge.