Influence of Opponent Knowledge and Competitive Level on the Cognitive Processes of Decision-Making in High School Kendo Athletes: An Exploratory Study

In competitive sports, players must make decisions rapidly and accurately. However, the cognitive process underlying decision-making while integrating opponent knowledge and relative competitive level remains unclear. This study explored whether these conditions influenced the cognitive process underlying decision-making in kendo athletes. Thirty high-school kendo experts (higher- and lower-skilled groups) observed temporally occluded videos of "kote" (wrist) and "men" (head) actions performed by a familiar high-level model and an unfamiliar intermediate-level model. They anticipated the strike and reported the reason for their anticipation ("intuition," "sword tip," or "whole body") or answered "uncertain." A fisher's exact test was performed for statistical analysis. "Uncertain" responses were significantly higher for the intermediate-level model during non-kinematic information stages, suggesting that knowledge about the opponent supported decision-making as non-kinematic information. Furthermore, accuracy rates were also significantly higher for the intermediate-level model immediately before the strike. This finding suggested that the difference in competitive level between observers and models influenced the cognitive processes involved in the tentative stage of decision-making. This study provides novel perspectives on the decision-making paradigm by suggesting that experts' cognitive mechanisms differ according to their opponent knowledge and relative competitive levels.