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Accounting for Dynamic Cognition–Action Interaction in Decision-Making Tasks in Sports: A Scoping Review

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Abstract

Athletes, sports officials, and coaches make decisions while facing varying levels of cognitive and motor demands. While classic judgment and decision-making (JDM) theories have focused on the cognitive demands, emerging approaches emphasize the interaction of cognitive and motor processes. As the theoretical understanding of JDM is not independent of the experimental tasks used to assess them, the present scoping review aimed to determine to what extent existing decision-making tasks in sports account for dynamic cognition–action interaction. Three databases were systematically searched. Studies were included if they comprised healthy participants, who completed a decision-making task with sport-specific stimuli, and decision-making parameters were assessed as main dependent variables. Upon screening, 430 studies were included, comprising 371 distinct decision-making tasks. The majority of the included studies examined decision-making processes in athletes (70.3%), followed by officials (26.7%) and coaches (3.0%). Despite the frequent use of video stimuli, the presentation of options was deemed rather static in the majority of the laboratory tasks (83.0%). The requisite responses in studies on sports officials and coaches were rather discrete (88.7%), largely constituting micromovements, while 66.4% of athletes’ responses were categorized as continuous, predominantly featuring whole-body movements. Understanding of the cognition–action interaction in JDM is currently undermined by relying on static rather than dynamic options, a focus on simulated rather than executed movements, and dependent variables that are not sufficiently sensitive to capture the cognition–action interaction. We encourage future research to tackle the identified limitations by making use of emerging theoretical approaches and technological developments.
Accounting for Dynamic CognitionAction Interaction in
Decision-Making Tasks in Sports: A Scoping Review
Maša Iskra, Laura Voigt, and Markus Raab
Institute of Psychology, German Sport University Cologne
Athletes, sports ofcials, and coaches make decisions while facing varying levels of
cognitive and motor demands. While classic judgment and decision-making (JDM)
theories have focused on the cognitive demands, emerging approaches emphasize the
interaction of cognitive and motor processes. As the theoretical understanding of JDM
is not independent of the experimental tasks used to assess them, the present scoping
review aimed to determine to what extent existing decision-making tasks in sports
account for dynamic cognitionaction interaction. Three databases were systematically
searched. Studies were included if they comprised healthy participants, who completed
a decision-making task with sport-specic stimuli, and decision-making parameters
were assessed as main dependent variables. Upon screening, 430 studies were included,
comprising 371 distinct decision-making tasks. The majority of the included studies
examined decision-making processes in athletes (70.3%), followed by ofcials (26.7%)
and coaches (3.0%). Despite the frequent use of video stimuli, the presentation of
options was deemed rather static in the majority of the laboratory tasks (83.0%). The
requisite responses in studies on sports ofcials and coaches were rather discrete
(88.7%), largely constituting micromovements, while 66.4% of athletesresponses
were categorized as continuous, predominantly featuring whole-body movements.
Understanding of the cognitionaction interaction in JDM is currently undermined by
relying on static rather than dynamic options, a focus on simulated rather than executed
movements, and dependent variables that are not sufciently sensitive to capture the
cognitionaction interaction. We encourage future research to tackle the identied
limitations by making use of emerging theoretical approaches and technological
developments.
Keywords: choice, judgment, athlete, sports ofcial, coach
Supplemental materials: https://doi.org/10.1037/spy0000361.supp
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This article was published Online First August 22, 2024.
Maša Iskra https://orcid.org/0009-0004-1444-1357
Data are available on request. The review procedure was
documented in the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic
Reviews and Meta-Analyses Flowchart. The protocol is
available as an online Supplemental Material. The authors
have no known conicts of interest to disclose.
In order to be included, studies were required to meet the
following criteria: (a) include healthy, noninjured partici-
pants; (b) comprise a decision-making task with sport-specic
stimuli; (c) assess decision-making variable(s) as main
dependent variables; and (d) provide full text in English
and be peer-reviewed.
No assessment of quality of the studies is provided
given our aim was to scope the methodologies used rather
than the empirical ndings, and risk-of-bias assessment is
not deemed necessary for scoping reviews (Tricco et al.,
2018). This scoping review followed the Preferred Report-
ing Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses
extension for Scoping Reviews guidelines (Tricco et
al., 2018).
Maša Iskra played a lead role in conceptualization, data
curation, formal analysis, and writingoriginal draft. Laura
Voigt played a lead role in writingreview and editing, a
supporting role in conceptualization and data curation, and an
equal role in supervision. Markus Raab played a supporting
role in writingreview and editing and an equal role in
supervision.
Correspondence concerning this article should be ad-
dressed to Maša Iskra, Institute of Psychology, German Sport
University Cologne, Am Sportpark Müngersdorf 6, 50933
Cologne, Germany. Email: m.iskra@dshs-koeln.de
193
Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology
© 2024 American Psychological Association 2025, Vol. 14, No. 1, 193213
ISSN: 2157-3905 https://doi.org/10.1037/spy0000361
... In doing so, they identify important conceptual considerations and potential solutions that will serve as a valuable guide for future research on decision making in sport. Iskra et al. (2025) also scrutinize traditional approaches toward judgment and decision making, with a specific focus on decision making during performance. Their scoping review highlights that traditional approaches have focused primarily on cognitive processes, without attending to the dynamic interplay between cognition and action that exist in applied decision-making tasks. ...
... They explain why adopting methods that capture the cognition-action interplay as a dynamic process is crucial to enhancing the ecological validity of decision-making research in sport and performance psychology. Iskra et al. (2025) argue that theoretical advances in this area require methods tailored to capture the cognition-action interaction that characterizes judgment and decision making in situ within sport and performance contexts. Musculus et al. (2025) propose an embodied planning paradigm as an exemplar of how theoretical integration can facilitate methodological advances in sport and performance psychology. ...
... This, at least, pertains to the domain of racket sports and includes our own research on anticipation (e.g., Loffing et al., 2016;Huesmann and Loffing, 2019). However, we expect that the methodological landscape would not noticeably change when extending the view on other interceptive sports and tasks (for methodological advancements in research on decision-making, e.g., see Inns et al., 2023;Iskra et al., 2024). ...
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