the effect of different levels of arousal and training intensity on decision making of expert female football players

skillful performance in soccer requires not only sound techniques but also quickand accurate decision making. these decisions are usually made in variousintensities of practice and performance. the main aim of this study was toinvestigate the effect of different levels of arousal and training intensity on decisionmaking (speed and accuracy) of expert female soccer players. for this purpose, 16expert female soccer players (mean age 22.4±3.8 yr) with 8 or more years ofcompetitive experience were voluntarily selected from tehran women's premierleague. soccer related photographs on a computer monitor were used to evaluatethe decision making task; participants had to decide which action they wouldundertake (shoot, pass, dribble). three different levels of arousal (low: with nospectators, medium: with silent spectators and high: with cheering spectators) inthree different levels of intensity (resting, 40% of hrmax, 80% of hrmax) weredesigned. to measure the accuracy and speed of decision making, parametricmethod of manova, 3(training intensity levels) in 3 (arousal levels), was used. tototally compare the groups, one-way analysis of variance, anova with repeatedmeasures and tukey post hoc test were used at α=95%. the results showed nosignificant difference in the speed of decision making among different arousallevels (p>0.05) while a significant difference was observed in the accuracy ofdecision making among different arousal levels (p˂0.05). the speed of decisionmaking improved in the low and medium arousal levels through an increase intraining intensity while no significant difference was observed in the speed ofdecision making in high arousal level among different intensity levels (p>0.05).furthermore, the accuracy of decision making showed no significant difference inlow and high arousal levels among different intensity levels (p>0.05). theaccuracy of decision making improved in low arousal level through an increase intraining intensity. these finding showed that training intensity and arousalseparately influenced each decision making component.