Research in Sports Management and Movement Behavior

Specify the especial skill in backhand short badminton serve: A challenge to schema theory

Authors

Maryam Abdolshai
Ahmad Farokhi
Ali Akbar Jaberi Moghadan
Seyed Mohammad Kazem Vaez Mosavi
Anooshiravan Kazemnejad
Abstract
Recent evidence suggest that massive amount of practice of a skill results in the development of a specific memory representation that is distinguished by its enhanced performance capability relative to the other members of the same class that is uniqe and termed 'Especial Skill'. This study aimed to investigate the emergence of special skill and reevaluation the visual-context hypothesis using badminton players in three skill levels (expert, skilled, less-experienced). Subjects (10 players in each group, mean age=23.12 ±3.85 years) performered 100 backhand short serves at five distances (1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5 meters from net) in each of environmental conditions (normal and covered court). The regression analyze showed that accuracy in skilled group at 2 meters distance was significantly better than predicted by regression equation, supporting the especial Skill effect, but it wasn’t showed in two other groups. This specific advantage of practice at this point was not emerged at absence of visual cues that supported the visual-context hypothesis.

Keywords

Motor control
Especial skill
Schema theory
Practice specificity