The aim of this study was to analyze the effect of the occlusion of spatial information in volleyball spike on defensive decision-making in athletes with different levels of experience. Participants were divided into adult (GAD; n=16), juvenile (GIM; n=16) and novice (GNO; n=16) groups. Five types of spatial information were occluded: ball (OE1), arm and hand (OE2), head (OE3), trunk (OE4), and lower limbs as a control condition (OE5). We measured the accuracy in predicting the ball's trajectory prediction and the confidence of the response. GAD was more precise than the other groups in the OE2 condition (P's<0.008), which provided the worst performance of the groups (P's<0.001). GAD showed more confidence than GNO in all conditions (P's<0.003), but with no difference compared to GIM (P's>0,036). GIM was only more confident than GNO in OE4 (P=0.01). Therefore, the OE1 and OE2 proved to have greater effect on the performance of the best participants.
Decision-making; signs; visual pattern recognition; volleyball
