Expert--novice differences in perception: how expert does the expert have to be?

Twelve expert and 15 novice badminton players viewed a film task which attempted to simulate the perceptual display of the sport of badminton. The film task varied in terms of visibility to either specific time periods of display information or to specific spatial areas of the display, and the subject's task was to determine whether the stroke being viewed had a cross-court or a down-the-line destination. In keeping with an earlier study (Abernethy and Russell, 1987a), expert players were shown to have a unique capability to decrease their prediction errors at an earlier point in the stroke sequence than could novices, but unlike the previous study this could not be attributed to the experts' superior use of arm cues. The robustness of expert--novice differences in perceptual strategy across changes in the level of expert--novice differentiation are discussed.