Interpersonal interactions improve the representativeness of embodied decision-making behaviour in football.

Decision making is a crucial skill in team sports, yet remains challenging to measure in controlled settings. For instance, video-based testing of decision making has long neglected the interpersonal interactions between attackers and defenders, therefore it remains unclear to what degree embodied d...

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Publicado en:Psychology of Sport & Exercise Vol. 84
Autores principales: Müller, Daniel, Höner, Oliver, van der Veerdonk, Danique, van der Meer, Willem, Mann, David
Formato: research Journal Article
Publicado: Elsevier B.V. May2026
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        14690292
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      jtl: Psychology of Sport & Exercise
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      dt: May2026
      vid: 84
      pid: 467
      pub: Elsevier B.V.
      place: New York, New York
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        192151756
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        10.1016/j.psychsport.2026.103063
        192151756
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        atl: Interpersonal interactions improve the representativeness of embodied decision-making behaviour in football.
      aug:
        au:
          Müller, Daniel
          Höner, Oliver
          van der Veerdonk, Danique
          van der Meer, Willem
          Mann, David
        affil: Department of Human Movement Sciences, Faculty of Behaviour and Movement Sciences, Amsterdam Movement Sciences and Institute Brain and Behaviour Amsterdam (iBBA), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands
      sug:
        subj:
          Interpersonal Relations
          Competitive Behavior
          Decision Making
          Athletic Performance Psychosocial Factors
          Soccer
          Task Performance and Analysis
          Human
          Empirical Research
          Descriptive Statistics
          Virtual Reality
          Avatars
          Psychomotor Performance
          Team Sports
          Teamwork
          Psychology, Sports
      ab: Decision making is a crucial skill in team sports, yet remains challenging to measure in controlled settings. For instance, video-based testing of decision making has long neglected the interpersonal interactions between attackers and defenders, therefore it remains unclear to what degree embodied decision-making tested in those conditions reflects that observed in the natural environment. The aim of this study was to examine the extent to which interpersonal interactions influence behaviour in an embodied decision-making task. We designed an interactive avatar defender in a virtual-reality setting and conducted an empirical study to evaluate the impact of the interactions. Attackers performed a 1v1 task, and we manipulated the defender's level of interactivity to compare the attacker's behaviour to that observed when facing an opponent in-situ. Decision-making behaviour was compared across four conditions of increasing interactivity (virtual no-opponent, virtual non-interactive opponent, virtual interactive opponent, and in-situ opponent). Results strongly support the idea that adding interactions makes the task more representative of in-situ behaviour. Specifically, key measures of behaviour (e.g., trial duration and number of touches) measured with the virtual-interactive opponent (β Touches = 4.3, β Duration = 2.7) were much more representative of the in-situ behaviour (β Touches = 5.4, β Duration = 3.6) than they were against the virtual non-interactive opponent (β Touches = 2.9, β Duration = 1.84) and in the virtual no-opponent condition (β Touches = 2.5 β Duration = 1.4). The results validate the call to incorporate interpersonal interactions as a key component of decision-making tasks, and to support this we introduce a novel method for assessing interactive decision-making skills that we make available open source. • Interpersonal interactions lead to behaviour that is more representative than that observed in non-interactive paradigms. • Decision-making behaviour changes when the decision-maker is interacting with other players. • Our interactive paradigm and computational model are available open source (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15824732).
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype:
        research
        Journal Article
      ougenre: Article
    language: English
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