JOURNAL OF SPORT PSYCHOLOGY, 1980.2.

22-33

Perception in Sport: Volleyball

Fran Allard and Janet L. Starkes

University of Waterloo

Volleyball players and nonplayers were compared for speed and accuracy of
performance in a task involving detecting the presence of a volleyball in a
rapidly presented slide of a volleyball situation. The volleyball situations
depicted both game action and nongame events, for example, timeouts and
warm-ups. Players and nonplayers did not differ in accuracy of response, but
players were much faster in responding for both game and nongame slides.
Further experiments showed that volleyball players' speed of response in ball
detection was not a function of a simple athlete-nonathlete difference, nor of
volleyball players' being fast at visual search in a nonvolleyball environment.
The perceptual skill shown by volleyball players in this series of experiments
is best described as a rapid visual search specific to the ball as target.

In a previous study, we have argued that perception is a component of skill in

basketball (Allard, Graham, & Paarsalu, 1980). Basketball players were superior
to nonplayers in remembering the position of basketball players after a Csecond
view of a slide of a structured game situation consisting of an offensive play in
progress. However, players and nonplayers did not differ in recall accuracy for a
slide of an unstructured game situation consisting of basketball transitional
situations. As has been established previously for the games of chess (Chase &
Simon, 1973), Go (Reitman, 1976), and bridge (Charness, 1979), skilled per-
formance is reflected by increased recall accuracy for game situations only.
Skilled perception, then, is only seen when a skilled performer is required to
encode information about his or her particular skill. Skill in perception is
demonstrated experimentally by a significant interaction between subject and
stimulus environment.
Different sports vary tremendously in requisite skills. One might wonder if
perception is a component common to all sport or only to those sports that

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the University of Water-
loo Research Grant fund, the National Research Council of Canada, and the Department
of Health and Welfare Canada, Fitness and Amateur Sport Branch.
We would like to thank the Canadian Volleyball Association and the Ontario Volley-
ball Association for their cooperation and interest and the coaches and players who acted
as subjects for their time. Special thanks to Pat Davis and the University of Waterloo
Volleyball Athenas 1975, 1976, 1977, who have been particularly patient. We acknowl-
edge as well the contributions of Douglas Baird who took the photographs used as stimuli,
and Kevin Munhall, Don Valerio, and Melanie Rodney who tested subjects for hours.
Reprint requests should be sent to F. Allard, Department of Kinesiology, University
of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, N2L 3G1.
 VOLLEYBALL 23

involve spatial transgressions into enemy territory (such as basketball, football,

and soccer). The present study is an attempt to determine the role of perception in
the game of volleyball.
Volleyball and basketball are very different games at virtually all levels of
description. In basketball, both teams are allowed to move over the entire court
and, despite the rules, often come into physical contact with each other. Volley-
ball teams are physically separated from one another by a net. A basketball team
can attempt to control the pace of the game by a variety of tactics: holding the
ball, harassing the opposition, etc. Game pace is much more difficult to influence
in volleyball because possession of the ball must be relinquished by returning the
ball to the other side of the net. Once the ball is on the other side of the net, there is
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little a team can do to exert game control. Basketball is played within a clearly
defined court area; if the ball passes outside a boundary line, it is out of play.
Volleyball is also played on a clearly defined court, but once the ball touches a
player on one team, the boundary lines become meaningless. Should the ball on a
serve or spike deflect off a player on the receiving team and pass outside the
boundary lines, the receiving team still must attempt to return the ball across the
net. The space in which the game is played is fixed for basketball, flexible for
volleyball.
Like basketball, volleyball has defensive formations and offensive plays. The
goal of both defense and offense in volleyball is, of necessity, totally different
from basketball. The goal of volleyball defense is to provide coverage of as much
of the court area as possible, unlike basketball defense which must protect the
basket and routes leading to the basket. The goal of a basketball offensive play is
to allow a player a relatively unmolested shot at the basket. The goal of a
volleyball attack is to deceive or confuse the defensive team for as long as possible
about the location of the impending attack by a spiker. Whereas a basketball
defensive player must attend to the developing attack of all opposition players, it
may be a good strategy for a volleyball defensive player to ignore the attack
pattern he is viewing-a pattern constructed to fool him.
In order to investigate perception in volleyball, subjects were asked to per-
form a simple detection task. In this task, subjects were asked to detect the
presence of a volleyball in a briefly exposed slide of a volleyball situation, a
simple task for both players and nonplayers. One half of the slides depicted
actual volleyball games. The other half of the slides were timeouts, opening
ceremonies, warm-ups-that is, volleyball situations involving everything but
games. We wondered if the ball detection task would show the same sensitivity to
structure as does the recall task; that is, will players detect the volleyball better
than nonplayers in game slides only?

Experiment 1

In Experiment 1, then, players and nonplayers watched for volleyballs in

tachistoscopically presented slides of game or nongame situations. Subjects
responded by saying yes or no into a microphone which acted to stop a timer
 24 ALLARD AND STARKES

initiated by the onset of the slide. Dependent measures collected were ~(2)~
a
nonparametric analog to d (McNicol, 1972), and voice reaction time-the time
between the onset of the slide and the subject's response.

Merhod
Subjects. Subjects consisted of 10 players from the University of Waterloo
women's varsity volleyball team and 10female nonplayers. The nonplayer group
consisted of kinesiology majors-individuals interested in physical activity, who
had no experience in competitive volleyball beyond high school.
Materials. Stimuli consisted of 40 game slides and 40 nongame slides. All
slides were taken in color at the Canadian National Senior Volleyball Champi-
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onships in 1975. Slides contained both male and female players. The game slides
were typical game situations; the nongame slides were volleyball scenes of
everything but games-timeouts, warm-ups, opening ceremonies, ankle tapings.
In one half of both sets of slides a ball was present; no ball was present in the other
half of the slides.
Procedure. Slides were presented by a Kodak autofocus slide projector
(model 850H), fitted with a zoom lens and an Ilex tachistoscopic shutter (model
no. 4) and timer (model 4-5). Slides were presented for the shortest setting on the
timer: 1/60 of a second (16.67 msec). Subjects were seated in front of a screen,
and the task was explained. Each subject viewed 5 practice slides shown at
approximately 50 msec to give them some idea of the nature of the slides and
practice at fixating on a dot prior to actual exposure of the slide. Subjects were
instructed to watch each slide for the presence of a volleyball and to respond to
each slide with a "yes" (ball was present in slide) or a "no" (no ball in slide).
Instructions stressed the importance of both speed and accuracy. Vocal re-
sponses were made into a microphone (Sony model F-26) and acted to stop a
digital msec timer that had been started by the shutter. Subjects initiated each
trial by pressing a hand-held button that triggered the shutter.
Subjects were tested on two separate days, viewing game and nongame slide
sets twice on each day (yielding 160 responses for each of the conditions). The
game and nongame slides were presented in blocks; subjects viewed game and
nongame slides alternately. The first block of slides (game or nongame) was
counterbalanced across subjects. An experimenter was present to record re-
sponses and to guarantee that subjects did not initiate a trial before the autofocus
on the slide projector had finished focusing the slide.

Results
Accuracy was scored by calculating p(A7) for each subject for game and
nongame slides over all trials. These data were analyzed by a 2 X 2 (player/ non-
player by gamelnongame) analysis of variance. Table 1shows detection accuracy
for players and nonplayers on game and nongame slides. As Table 1 confirms,
there were no significantdifferencesin accuracy; nonplayers werejust as accurate
at detecting the presence of a volleyball as were players. Game slides provided no
more accurate detection rates than did nongame slides. Even cursory examina-
 VOLLEYBALL 25

tion of the voice reaction time data revealed tremendous differences between
players and nonplayers. Consequently, mean voice reaction time for each subject
was also analyzed by a 2 X 2 X 4 (player/nonplayer by gamelnongame by
response type-hit, correct rejection, miss, false alarm) analysis of variance.
Players were significantly faster than nonplayers, F(1, 18) = 10.78,~< .01, for
both game and nongame slides, as may be seen in Table 1. Furthermore, there
was a significant effect of response type, F(3, 18) = 5.98, p < .05, hits being
significantly faster than all other responses for both players and nonplayers.
Response type did not interact significantly with the playerlnonplayer factor,
F(3, 54) = .758. In other words, players were faster in responding regardless of
whether the response was yeslno or correct/incorrect.
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Table I-Mean Detection Accuracy [P(A)] and Voice Response Time (VRT)
for Experiment 1

p(8) VRT (rnsec)

game nongarne game nongarne
players .a77 .a78 91 7 928
non~lavers .a82 .855 3007 3001

Although no differences occurred for accuracy of response, players were

much faster than nonplayers in responding. The lack of any differences in
accuracy would seem to argue against any sort of differential speed-accuracy
trade-offs between the groups. However, Pachella (1974) has argued that espe-
cially at high accuracy levels-slight accuracy increments may be very costly in
terms of response speed. P(A) scores and mean voice reaction times (VRT) for
the two groups were correlated using Pearson product moment correlation
coefficients. If speed-accuracy trading was occurring, a negative correlation
should be observed between speed and accuracy of response. Correlations showed
no evidence of trade-offs for either group (nonplayers' r = +.097, players' r =
+.526).

Discussion
This experiment shows clearly that volleyball players differ from nonplayers
in the speed with which they are able to perform the detection task. A small
difference in speed of response would not be unexpected; it would not be
surprising to learn that athletes have a faster reaction time than nonathletes. The
size of the difference (mean difference in detection speed = 2008 msec) would
seem to argue against a simple athlete-nonathlete difference.
The detection accuracy data show no differences between players and non-
players and no differences between game and nongame slides. This finding is
quite unlike the findings for basketball: the better basketball players showed
better recall scores only for game situations. The difference between basketball
and volleyball could be due to a difference between the two sports in requisite
cognitive skills or, more likely, to a differencebetween recall and detection tasks.
 26 ALLARD AND STARKES

There is no way of resolving the source of the difference from the present study.
One of the problems with the first experiment is the lack of any evidence to
indicate that the structure1 nonstructure manipulation was at all effective. Struc-
ture was supposedly manipulated by showing slides of game and nongame
volleyball situations. At the very least, nongame slides should have shown a
difference in detection accuracy for both subject groups corresponding to the
reduction in structure. It might be argued that some sort of "volleyball structure"
was present in both sets of slides. Players' speed of detection superiority for both
types of slides could be due to the weakness of the experimental manipulation of
structure. It is important to determine what happens to players' performance
when structure is removed; will players' performance in such a situation decline
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to the level of nonplayers? Before making any inferences about skilled perception
for structured or lack of structure situations, it seems essential to have a valid
experimental manipulation of structure.

Experiment 2

In the second experiment, we attempted to remove any available structure by

presenting the nongame slides upside down. The effect of this manipulation
should be reflected by a reduction in detection accuracy for the upside down
nongame slides. The purpose of Experiment 2, then, was to observe the effect of a
stronger manipulation of structure on speed and accuracy of players and non-
players on the ball detection task, as well as to attempt to replicate the speed of
response superiqrity seen for players in Experiment 1.

Method
Subjects. Subjects were 10 female varsity players from the University of
Waterloo women's team. The control subjects were 10female intramural basket-
ball players from the University intramural league. The control subjects had only
high school experience with volleyball.
The varsity players had all acted as subjects in the previous experiment, five
players having been tested I 1 months earlier and the other five, 4 months earlier.
In order to minimize the advantage of the players, a new set of game slides was
used. Since the nongame slides were being shown upside down, the same set of
slides was used in this condition as had been seen in Experiment 1. In addition, all
subjects, both players and nonplayers, were given one day of "familiarization"
training, during which they practiced on 10 game and 10 nongame slides.
Materials. Forty new game slides were used in Experiment 2. These were
taken at the same tournament as were the game slides from Experiment 1.
Nongame slides were the same slide set as in Experiment 1, turned upside down.
Procedure. Experimental procedures were identical to Experiment 1 with
two exceptions. Instead of a player initiating her own trials, all trials were
experimenter initiated. Subjects received a "familiarization" day as already
outlined, followed by a test day. The test day consisted of 80 game and 80
nongame slides.
 VOLLEYBALL 27

Results
P(Z) scores were used again as the measure of detection accuracy. Scores
were analyzed by a 2 X 2 (playerlnonplayer by gamelnongame) analysis of
variance. As Table 2 indicates, players were significantly more accurate than
nonplayers, F(1, 18) = 5.89, p < .05. Game slides were easier than nongame
slides, F(l, 18) = 31.45, p < .001.

Table 2-Mean Detection Accuracy [P(A)] and Voice Response Time (VRT)
for Experiment 2

~(2) VRT (msec)

game nongame game nongame
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players .908 .827 708 728

nonolavers .880 .787 1445 1556

The interaction that would be predicted if players' increased accuracy were

reflecting game structure was not significant, F(l, 18) = .147. Upside down
slides were more difficult for both groups of subjects; in other words, game
structure aided both groups.
Voice response-time data were again entered into a 2 X 2 X 4 (playerlnon-
player by gameinongame by response category) analysis of variance. As Table 2
shows, players were significantly faster than nonplayers in response latency,
F(1, 18) = 30.49, p < .001. As well, both groups showed significantly faster
responses to game slides, F(1, 18) = 7.74, p < .01. The elusive interaction be-
tween player and game structure again failed to reach significance, F(l, 18) =
3.75, showing that players' superiority in response speed held for both game and
nongame slides.
It is possible that players might have processed less information from a slide
in order to respond. In terms of signal detection theory, players could have had
more lax criteria than nonplayers. Thus, log beta scores for players and nonplay-
ers were analyzed for game and nongame slides. This analysis showed that
players and nonplayers did not differ significantly, F(1, 18) = .097, and both
groups adopted significantly more strict criteria for nongame slides, F(l, 18) =
5 . 0 4 2 , ~< .05. The players' superiority in speed of response, therefore, cannot be
attributed to their adopting a more lax criterion than the nonplayers.

Discussion
Recall that Experiment 2 was an attempt to insure that the structure manipu-
lation was effective. The data indicate that both groups of subjects showed
poorer detection accuracy and longer voice reaction times for the upside down
nongame slides than for the game slides. The significant decrease in performance
for the nongame slides of Experiment 2 would seem to indicate that little
structure exists for these slides.
Despite the effectiveness of the structure manipulation, the interaction be-
tween structure and skill did not emerge: structure improved performance for
 28 ALLARD AND STARKES

both players and nonplayers. Even though the structure by skill interaction did
not appear, the detection task employed in the present experiments did differen-
tiate between players and nonplayers. In both experiments, players were much
faster in indicating their decisions on the detection task than were nonplayers.
Moreover, in Experiment 2 players showed significantly higher detection accu-
racy than nonplayers. The problem comes in making inferences on the basis of
the difference in speed of response between players and nonplayers. As men-
tioned previously, the fact that volleyball players do not show the same perform-
ance increments for game structure slides seen for skilled chess, Go, bridge, and
basketball players could mean that structure is not important for volleyball. On
the other hand, the lack of a significant player by structure interaction could be
caused by a variety of other factors.
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It is possible that the task demands of the detection paradigm used in these
studies militate against the use of structure in performing the task. The most
efficient strategy for a detection task might be to attempt to ignore as much of the
background information as possible. The recall task clearly requires that a
subject attend to the entire array. What we are observing could be the difference
between task demands for detection and recall paradigms rather than a difference
between volleyball and basketball.
Despite the difficulty in arriving at conclusions about encoding differences
for different sports, it might be argued that the present data show a clear
difference between volleyball players and nonplayers. This difference in speed of
detection, it might be claimed, is a correlate to skill in volleyball. This argument is
impossible to justify because the superiority of the players in speed of detection is
seen for both structured and unstructured slides: that is, player superiority for the
present study is expressed statisticallyby a main effect in detection speed between
players and nonplayers rather than by an interaction between player and struc-
ture.
The interaction between skill and structure observed for chess, Go, bridge,
and basketball has two components. First of all, the superior performance of
players in recalling structured information reflects an encoding difference that
exists as a function of skill level. Equally as important is the "no difference" point
in the interaction which shows that skilled and unskilled individuals do not differ
once structure is removed. This skilled-unskilled equivalence for the control
observation is crucial because it eliminates the possibility that the difference seen
for the recall of structured information is due to factors other than skill-for
example, different interest in the task, different motivational levels, different
arousal levels. As well, skilled-unskilled performance differencescould be due to
individual differences between subject groups; players could, for example, have
better short-term memories than nonplayers.
In summary, equivalent performance for skilled and unskilled subjects on the
unstructured task shows that the two groups are the same in terms of experimen-
tal task factors and individual differences. However, once skilled and unskilled
subjects differ in control performance, a multitude of explanations other than
differences in skill emerge as plausible contributors to any performance differ-
 VOLLEYBALL 29

ences observed for structured information. The experimental course in compre-

hending a main effect between skilled and unskilled subjects becomes one of
eliminatingother plausible explanations for the performance difference observed,
leaving perception as the only viable explanation.
Note that the main effect between players and nonplayers in speed of ball
detection observed for the present study leads to two different sets of experi-
ments. The first set of studies consists of investigating speed of detection as a
correlate to skill in volleyball by eliminating explanations other than perception
for players' superior speed on the detection task. The second set of studies
consists of contrasting the role of structure in perception in sport for recall and
detection experimental tasks. The remaining studies reported in this paper are an
attempt to determine if speed of detection is a factor in volleyball skill.
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Experiment 3

In order to ascertain that speed of ball detection is a correlate of skill in

volleyball, it must be shown that players' speed of detection superiority is not
simply due to a difference between athletes and nonathletes. Athletes may have
greater motivation to do well in a sport-related task. Sage (1977) cites six studies
showing that, in a variety of situations, "athletes have consistently recorded
faster RTs than nonathletes" (p. 255). In Experiment 3, the performance of
volleyball players on ball detection is compared to the performance of three other
athletic groups: basketball players, field hockey players, and swimmers. If speed
of ball detection is simply discriminating athletes from nonathletes, no difference
would be expected between performance by volleyball players and the other
three groups of varsity athletes.

Method
Subjects. All subjects were female varsity athletes at the University of Water-
loo or Wilfrid Laurier University. Subjects were 24 volleyball players, 22 basket-
ball players, 14 swimmers, and 12 field hockey players.
Procedure. Subjects were tested on 80 volleyball game slides, 40 slides with a
ball present and 40 slides without a ball present. Slides were shown for 16msec by
means of a tachistoscopic shutter; subjects responded by saying "yes" if they
believed a ball was present or "no" if they felt no ball was present.

Results and Discussion

Dependent measures collected were detection accuracy P(% and speed of
detection (i.e., voice reaction time). Summary data for the four groups may be
seen in Table 3.
One-way analysis of variance- showed no significant difference between the
groups for detection accuracy P(A), F(3, 68) = 1.40. However, voice reaction
time did discriminate between the groups, F(3, 68) = 2.88, p < .05. Further
analysis revealed that volleyball players responded significantly faster than
swimmers, t(36) = 3 . 4 4 , ~< -01, and field hockey players, t(34) = 2 . 3 4 , ~< .05.
 30 ALLARD A N D STARKES

Table 3-Mean Detection Accuracy [P(x)] and Voice Reaction Time (VRT)
for Teams

Mean years Mean years

playing playing own
Sport N volleyball sport P(Z) VRT
volleyball 24 5.25 5.25 .880 674
basketball 22 3.19 not available .882 744
swimmers 14 2.07 4.50 .877 832
field hockey 12 1.58 4.67 .858 860

However, basketball players and volleyball players did not differ in speed of
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detection, t(44) > 1.53.

The lack of difference between volleyball and basketball players is strange;
does basketball require the same sort of rapid ball detection as does volleyball?
Before drawing any conclusions about similar perceptual skills for basketball
and volleyball, we examined the amount of experiencethe basketball players had
with volleyball. Data on years experience in volleyball were available from a
questionnaire routinely completed by each of our subjects. Surprisingly, a ma-
jority of the basketball players had some experience with competitive volleyball,
and some of the basketball players had extensive volleyball experience (one of
the basketball players had participated as a volleyball player at a provincial
level). In an attempt to evaluate the influence of years of experience with
volleyball on the ball detection task, the sample of volleyball players was divided
into those players who were regular players in games and those players who
regularly sat on the bench in games. Basketball and volleyball players who did
not play regularly did not differ significantly in years experiencewith volleyball,
t(36) = 2.07. Comparison of ball detection times for the three groups (volleyball
regular players, basketball players, and volleyball players who did not play
regularly) showed volleyball regular players to be significantly faster than the
other two groups, F(2, 47) = 6.18, p < .01. Basketball players and volleyball
bench players did not differ in speed of ball detection, t(36) = .608. The perform-
ance of basketball players on the volleyball detection task seems to be a function
of the experience of the basketball players with the game of volleyball.
In summary, then, speed of ball detection does seem to be a function of
experience with volleyball. Other athletes, swimmers, and field hockey players,
perform significantly slower than volleyball players on ball detection. Once
number of years of experience with volleyball is controlled, volleyball players are
significantly faster than basketball players at ball detection. Speed in the ball
detection task, then, is not simply an athlete-nonathlete difference.

Experiment 4

Volleyball players are faster at detecting volleyballs than are nonplayers or

other athletes. What strategy are volleyball players using to produce such rapid
 VOLLEYBALL 31

responding? It could be that volleyball players are simply "fast deciders," that
volleyball players would show the same speed in detecting any visual target.
Experiment 4 explores the possibility that volleyball players are fast searchers by
comparing the performance of players in ball detection with the performance of
players in detecting barns in a series of country slides.

Method
Subjects. Eleven subjects participated in this experiment. All were players
from the Wilfrid Laurier women's varsity volleyball team.
Procedure. Stimuli consisted of 40 volleyball game slides, 20 with a ball
present and 20 without a ball present. Subjects viewed 40 slides of Waterloo
county, 20 slides with a barn present and 20 slides without a barn present.
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Subjects viewed each slide in both sets for 16 msec, and responded "yes" if a
target was present or "no" if no target was seen. One half of the subjects viewed
the barns first, the other half viewed the game slides first.

Results and Discussion

Again, dependent measures collected were accuracy of detection P(Z) and
speed of decision. Analysis of variance showed no significant difference in
accuracy of detection between barns and volleyballs (Ms = .854 and .836, re-
spectively), F(I, 9) = 1.9; however, players were much faster at detecting balls
(M= 747 msec) than they were at detecting barns (M= 829 msec), F(1, 9) = 8.24,
p < .05.
Players, then, are not simply fast deciders. Speed at ball detection seen with
volleyball players is clearly dependent on the scene that players are viewing.

Experiment 5
Volleyball players are faster at ball detection than at barn detection. Speed of
ball detection seen for players could be attributable to two different explanations.
First, players' speed could be specific to searching for a volleyball. Alternatively,
players may simply be able to process information present in volleyball scenes
faster than information in country scenes. Players, in other words, may be able to
search for any target commonly found on a volleyball court as quickly as they can
for volleyballs. In Experiment 5, the performance of players detecting volleyballs
in game slides is compared with the ability to detect another target always found
on the court during a volleyball game-a referee.
Method
Subjects. Subjects were 21 female varsity volleyball players. They were
members of teams at the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University.
Materials. Stimuli consisted of 80 volleyball game slides. Forty of these slides
were used for ball detection; a ball was present in 20 slides and not present in the
remaining 20 slides. The other 40 slides were used for referee detection; a referee
or umpire (each an official at the net) was present in 20 slides and not present in
the remaining 20 slides.
 32 ALLARD AND STARKES

Procedure. Slides were presented for 16 msec each by a tachistoscopic shutter

and timer mounted on a carousel slide projector. Subjects responded verbally
into a microphone which stopped a msec timer that had been started by the flash
of the slide.
All subjects viewed both sets of slides. Slides were presented in blocks: one
half of the subjects saw the ball detection slides followed by the referee detection
slides, the other half of the subjects saw the slides in the reverse order. Subjects
were instructed as to the appropriate target, and instructed to respond "yes" for
the presence of a target or "no" when no target was seen as quickly and accurately
as possible. Dependent measures collected were P(A) and VRT.

Results and Discussion

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Mean performance for players in detecting balls and referees was calculated.
One-way analysis of variance shows that volleyballs were detected with signifi-
cantly greater accuracy ( M = .882), F(1, 26) = 9 . 0 8 9 , ~< .01, and with signifi-
cantly greater speed (M = 632 msec), F(1, 26) = 16.869, p < .01, than were
referees (Ms = .858 and 689 msec, respectively).
Thus players are both more accurate and faster at detecting the presence of a
volleyball in a game slide, suggesting that the perceptual skill shown by players is
contingent on the volleyball as target. It would be tempting to conclude that
players are using a rapid visual search similar to the skilled search shown by
subjects who have had extended practice in searching for letter targets (Neisser,
1967). Were this the case, players should be little influenced by the context of the
slide they are searching as shown Experiment 1. However, the data from Ex-
periment 2 show that players are significantly slowed in search by changing the
orientation of the nongame slides. Further work, then, needs to be carried out to
verify if players are indeed using a ball-specific search strategy.

General Discussion: Perceptual Skill in Volleyball

These studies, it is hoped, have convinced the reader that perception is an

element of skill in volleyball. We have shown that volleyball players are much '

faster at detecting a volleyball in a rapidly flashed slide of a volleyball situation

than are nonplayers. This difference is not related to the fact that players are
athletes, nor to the fact that players are able to make fast decisions in any visual
search task. The strategy adopted by skilled volleyball players seems to entail a
rapid visual search for a ball, ignoring, for the most part, context information.
We have attempted, then, to establish rapid ball detection as a correlate to
volleyball skill.
The problem remains of relating the ball detection skill seen for volleyball to
the recall skills seen for chess, bridge, Go, and basketball. The possibility re-
mains that volleyball players would show superior performance in a 5-second
recall task for volleyball game positions. As has been repeated throughout this
paper, it has yet to be determined whether the differences observed between
 VOLLEYBALL 33

volleyball and chess players are a difference between detection and recall para-
digms or a difference between volleyball and chess.
It should be emphasized that the volleyball studies show the importance of
response speed to sport performance. Many sports, such as baseball batting,
hitting a tennis ball or a squash ball, returning a volleyball across the net, do not
involve terribly complex physical skills. Indeed, if sports such as baseball, tennis,
or volleyball are played slowly enough they are child's play. It is not until the
stress of having to perceive and move rapidly is added to these sports that their
true complexity becomes obvious. It is not surprising, then, that detection speed
would emerge as an important factor in volleyball skill.

References
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Manuscript submitted: 8/23/79

Revision received: I / I 1/80