ABSTRACT
Peak performance requires a vivid awareness of the environment. To have such awareness, attention should be focused on aspects of the environment relevant for one’s actions. According to Weinberg and Gould (1999), situation awareness is ‘One of the least understood but most interesting and important aspects of attentional focus in sport’ (p. 328). The ecological approach to visual perception and action (Gibson, 1979) may offer a useful starting point for understanding situation awareness in sport as this issue is a core theme of this approach: perceiving the environment by detecting those sources of information that are relevant for one’s actions. The control of movement, according to ecological psychology, is based on a continuous coupling to available perceptual information. Given the relevance of information detection, it is no surprise that perceptual skill is part and parcel of peak performance in sport (see Williams et al., 1999). For instance, research has demonstrated differences in visual search behaviour between expert and novice performers, where experts are superior in using predictive information (i.e. advance visual cues) to guide their anticipatory responses (e.g. Abernethy, 1987; Savelsbergh et al., 2002; Williams and Burwitz, 1993).
