Recognition Within the Decision-Making Process: A Case Study of Expert Volleyball Players

This article reports on decision-making under time pressure conditions. It aims at testing the Recognition-Primed Decision model with regard to volleyball. Seven male expert players participated in this study. A match was videotaped; each player was interviewed in a self-confrontation interview. Inductive and deductive analysis revealed three main results. The first showed that their decision-making was based on a recognition process of the situation typicality. The second emphasized that this process had four by-products: (a) expectations, (b) relevant cues, (c) plausible goals, and (d) typical action. The players did not equally report these by-products. The third main result showed that the decisions were largely prearranged. They consisted of an association between a typical situation and a typical action, the typical action was then adapted to the current situation. The results are discussed in relation to the Recognition-Primed Decision model and to research that has considered decision-making.