The Influence of Environmental Constraints in 360° Videos on Decision Making in Soccer

Data Analysis of Psychological Approaches to Soccer Research: Using LDA Topic Modeling

This study identifies the topical areas of research that have attempted a psychological approach to soccer research over the last 33 years (1990-2022) and explored the growth and stagnation of the topic as well as research contributions to soccer development. Data were obtained from 1863 papers from the Web of Science database. The data were collected through keyword text mining and data preprocessing to determine the keywords needed for analysis. Based on the keywords, latent Dirichlet allocation-based topic modeling analysis was performed to analyze the topic distribution of papers and explore research trends by topic area. The topic modeling process included four topic area and fifty topics. The "Coaching Essentials in Football" topic area had the highest frequency, but it was not statistically identified as a trend. However, coaching, including training, is expected to continue to be an important research topic, as it is a key requirement for success in the highly competitive elite football world. Interest in the research field of "Psychological Skills for Performance Development" has waned in recent years. This may be due to the predominance of other subject areas rather than a lack of interest. Various high-tech interventions and problem-solving attempts are being made in this field, providing opportunities for qualitative and quantitative expansion. "Motivation, cognition, and emotion" is a largely underrated subject area in soccer psychology. This could be because survey-based psychological evaluation attempts have decreased as the importance of rapid field application has been emphasized in recent soccer-related studies. However, measuring psychological factors contributes to the study of football psychology through a new methodology and theoretical background. Recognizing the important role of psychological factors in player performance and mental management, as well as presenting new research directions and approaches that can be directly applied to the field, will advance soccer psychology research.

A developmental perspective on decision making in young soccer players: The role of executive functions

Lately, interest in both domain-specific and domain-general cognitive processes has increased as a means to explain soccer player expertise. While the two types of processes have mostly been studied separately, we sought to connect these lines of research by investigating the role of executive functions in soccer players' decision making from a developmental perspective. As these cognitive processes as well as their relation might differ between age groups, we took a developmental perspective to better understand this link in a sample of N = 128 soccer players (Mage = 10.69 years, SD = 1.44). Two age groups (younger vs. older players) performed a video-based option-generation and decision-making task that used temporal occlusion. Additionally, executive functions were assessed with standardized computer-based tests. Results show a link between executive functions and sport-specific decision making, most prominent for working memory. Further, older players generated better options and showed better inhibition and cognitive flexibility than younger players. We suggest there is a crucial turning point in cognitive development around the age of 11 years.