Decoding (un)Known Opponent's Game Play, a Real-Life Badminton Eye Tracking Study

Is the underlying cognitive processes different when playing with an opponent whose game play is familiar to that of an unknown? This study filtered the advance cues extracted by expert and amateur players when paired with an opponent whose game play is familiar to that of an unknown opponent. Our data collected in a real-life naturalistic game play conditions suggests that at the beginning of the game and for the first serve only the opponent's torso is crucial for cues and as the game progresses the information from the feet seems to be sufficient for the expert players in contrast to the data from the amateur player. Subsequently the preparatory or quiet-eye period for the serves at the beginning of the game play was higher than for later serves for all player sets. The preparation time for known opponents by expert players was higher for the first serve than for the unknown opponents but by the fifth serve the duration was negligible. Analysis of complete rallies show that post-serve attention allocation to opponent's racket and shuttle-in-flight is paramount in the play for both sets of opponents. Taken together the results of this investigation suggests that expert player's visual attention was distinguishable to that of an amateur player and expert players quickly decode unknown opponent's competence fairly early in the game play and follow consistent pattern of visual search. The results from the preliminary experimental data suggest the possibility of understanding how humans employ dynamic pattern recognition models in visual-search.