About Section 2

The Department of Cognition in Team Sports deals with sports games related teaching and research projects at the interface between training, movement, and cognition. For example, performance-optimising interactions between perception and movement are investigated to derive training measures. To this end, research projects are carried out to analyse (coordinated) gaze behaviour in various sports games (including basketball, handball, and beach volleyball) with the aim of improving the athletic performance of athletes and referees by optimising positioning and movement. By means of sensor- and camera-based movement recordings, performance-oriented analyses of movement sequences are carried out and new training options for athletes are developed using real-time feedback. In addition, the Department of Cognition in Team Sports uses computer vision methods to automate the annotation of large volumes of data in order to allow for position analyses by creating heatmaps (e.g., in table tennis) or for movement analyses by automated evaluation systems (e.g., in golf), among others.

The department's team uses a wide range of scientific methods, such as cognitive and motor tests, innovative sensor technology, and modern data analysis. This makes it possible, among other things, to accompany projects from school-, health-, and recreational sports to high-performance sports with the linking of theory and practice. The aim is not only to transfer scientific findings into sports practice but also to establish research directly in the field and develop it sustainably. For example, the models for classifying visual attention performance (Attention Window Model), for (coordinated) gaze behaviour, and for individual training in team sports games (PoST Model) developed by the department are used up to the highest leagues and associations of various sports games.

The developed models and other employed research approaches allow for diverse interdisciplinary connection possibilities to other working groups and institutes within the GSU Cologne as well as cooperation with many external partners.

Latest Publications:

• Baumgartner, T., Klatt, S., & Donath, L. (2023). Revealing the Mutual Information between Body-Worn Sensors and Metabolic Cost in Running. Sensors, 23, 1756.
• Geisen, M. Fox, A., & Klatt, S. (2023). VR as an innovative learning tool in sports education. Applied Sciences, 13, 2239.
• Haas, F., Baumgartner, T., Klein-Soetebier, T., Seifriz, F., & Klatt, S. (2023). Heatmap analysis to differentiate diverse player types in table tennis – A training and tactical strategy development potential. Applied Sciences, 13, 1139.
• Meyer, J., & Klatt, S. (2023). Additional substitutions in elite European football. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching.
• Schrödter, R., Noël, B., & Klatt, S. (2023). Game Management by Referees to Compensate for Errors in Judgement: A Decision Flow model. International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology.
• Schrödter, R., Schwarting, A., Fasold, F., Schul, K., & Klatt, S. (2023). The relevance of general spatial anticipation skills for basketball referees. Applied Sciences, 13, 2991.
• Weiland, F., Noël, B., & Klatt, S. (2023). Effects of wingwave® on athletes' wellbeing and fluidity of gaze behavior. Frontiers in Psychology.

 Currently Funded Projects:

• 2022-2024 XR as Training Method in Golf: Visual and Tactile Feedback for Movement Optimisation
• 2021-2024 Multimodal Immersive Learning with Artificial Intelligence for Psychomotor Skill

Current Prizes/Awards:

• Johannes Meyer, Frowin Fasold, Karsten Schul, Mattias Sonnenschein, & Stefanie Klatt: Excellence in Research Award for the article, “The Defender's Vision-Gaze Behavior of One-on-One Defenders in Basketball”, published in the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology
• Mai Geisen: 1^st Place in the 1^st Promotors Think Tank at the German Sport University Cologne on ‘Digital Applications for Education and Mediation in Sport’
• Karsten Schul and Sebastian Schwab: Inclusion prize of the State of NRW 2022 (1^st Place)