ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the extant literature on the pattern perception skills of expert athletes in invasion games such as football and basketball. Mention of expert athletes such as tennis player Roger Federer, footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, or basketball All-Star Dwayne Wade usually conjures images of exquisite skills based on the impression that they have more time and/or space in which to act than their competitors. Expert sport performers demonstrate a superior capacity to interpret different types of sport-specific visual information for the production of action. This perceptual advantage expresses itself, most notably, in sport-specific tests of anticipatory skill and pattern perception. A primary information source demonstrated to facilitate anticipation is the opponent’s pre-contact movement pattern. A twist to the traditional pattern recognition paradigm has also been used to examine the degree to which pattern perception has an anticipatory element.
