Beyond the trained eye: An objective method to predict game sense in team sports

Talent identification in sports requires a prediction of how athletes will perform in the future based on a sample of their behaviors. Perceptual cognitive-skills or 'game sense' in sports jargon is important for performance, yet sport organizations lack objective and validated measures to predict it. This study aimed to establish the degree to which subjective evaluations of athletes' in-match perceptual-cognitive skills could be predicted by their performance on objective perceptual-cognitive tests. The perceptual-cognitive skills of 40 highly-trained ice-hockey players were assessed by their coaches and the results were compared with the athletes' performance on four laboratory perceptual-cognitive tasks (neuropsychological battery, multiple-object tracking, temporal occlusion, virtual reality). Athletes were also assessed by scouts throughout a hockey season and during small-sided games. Scout judgments best predicted coach rankings, with measures from small-sided games, neuropsychological battery, virtual reality and temporal occlusion improving prediction. Results suggest that adding perceptual-cognitive testing could help scouts better measure athletes during talent identification.