Manipulating task constraints to reduce the herding behaviour in team games

• Main Author: Koh, Sherlyn Xiao Tian.
• Other Authors: Chow Jia Yi
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: Science::General
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/52120
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Young soccer players are notorious for swarming around the ball. Yet, finding space is known to be one of the essential elements to successful soccer. Task constraints have shown to be able to alter behaviour. The purpose of the study is, therefore, to put these together and establish if the manipulation of task constraints can reduce the herding behaviour that so often plagued the games of children. 12 male novice participants, aged between 8-10 years old, from a local soccer academy, were randomly allocated into an experimental group and a control group. They were required to play a 3v3 small-sided game of soccer without any goalkeeper. The experimental group underwent two blocks of intervention with manipulation of task constraints while the control group practiced with the usual game. Three variables of: Stretch Index (SI) of each team, Geometric Centre (GC) of each team in relation to the ball and GC of each team in relation to each other were analyzed. The experimental group showed increased non-herding behaviour (18.2%) in the post-test whereas the control group noted a higher herding behaviour in both tests. The experimental group (2.90m) also recorded a greater distance between team GC and ball as compared to the control group (2.55m). Both the experimental and control group indicated larger distance between team GC in the post-test. There are sufficient signs to show that practitioners can indeed reduce the common herding behaviour by adopting similar task manipulations in their trainings or teachings to improve their teams’ game play.