Design of a network of game principles for volleyball based on intent as a systemic agent
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47197/retos.v79.119132Keywords:
Decision-making, sports initiation, sports performance , sports training, tacticsAbstract
Introduction: The principles of play constitute rules that determine player behavior and coordinate collective activity, acting as a functional bridge between game objectives and motor actions through intention.
Objective: The purpose of this study is to present a proposal for principles of play in volleyball, emphasizing the nature and functionality of intention.
Methodology: Using an essay format, a conceptual framework has been developed to operationally understand intention, drawing from the convergence of various theoretical approaches, such as social psychology, the Theory of Planned Behavior, cognitive neuroscience, ecological dynamics, Ecological Rationality, the naturalistic perspective, and the Recognition-Primed Decision Model.
Results: A hypothetical model of the operational process through which intention unfolds is proposed, from the principles of play to the motor response. From this, the need for a hierarchical structure emerges, which is organized by the different levels into which game objectives are broken down.
Discussion: Intention, studied as a psychological factor, proves useful for deepening the understanding of the feasibility and implementation of principles of play.
Conclusion: Approaches from both the ecological and cognitive perspectives in the process of intention-based decision-making often generate practical, non-mutually exclusive solutions, although their underlying theoretical conceptions necessarily diverge on concepts such as semantic pointers.
References
Alm, P. A. (2021). The dopamine system and automatization of movement sequences: A review with relevance for speech and stuttering. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 15, 661880. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2021.661880
Antón, J. (1998). Balonmano. Táctica Grupal Ofensiva. Concepto, estructura y metodología. Gymnos.
Antón, J. (2002). Balonmano. Táctica Grupal Defensiva. Concepto, estructura y metodología. Grupo Editorial Universitario.
Arabacı, G., & Parris, B. A. (2020). Inattention and task switching performance: The role of predictabil-ity, working memory load and goal neglect. Psychological Research, 84, 2090–2110. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-019-01214-1
Araújo, D., & Davids, K. (2016). Team Synergies in Sport: Theory and Measures. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1449. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01449
Araújo, D., Davids, K., & Renshaw, I. (2020). Cognition, emotion and action in sport: An ecological dy-namics perspective. En G. Tenenbaum & R. C. Eklund (Eds.), Handbook of Sport Psychology (4.ª ed., Vol. 1, pp. 535–555). John Wiley & Sons
Ashford, M., Abraham, A., & Poolton, J. (2021). Understanding a Player’s Decision-Making Process in Team Sports: A Systematic Review of Empirical Evidence. Sports, 9(5), 65. https://doi.org/10.3390/sports9050065
Badets, A., & Blandin, Y. (2012). Feedback and intention during motor-skill learning: A connection with prospective memory. Psychological Research, 76(5), 601–610. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-011-0365-0
Bayer, C. (1986). La enseñanza de los juegos deportivos colectivos. Editorial Hispano Europea S.A.
Bera, K., Shukla, A., & Bapi, R. S. (2021). Motor chunking in internally guided sequencing. Brain Sciences, 11(3), 292. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11030292
Bertalanffy, L.V. (1989). Teoría General de los Sistemas. Fundamento, Desarrollo, Aplicaciones (7ª re-impresión). Fondo de cultura económica.
Bombín-González, I., Cifuentes-Rodríguez, A., Climent-Martínez, G., Luna-Lario, P., Cardas-Ibáñez, J., Tirapu-Ustárroz, J., & Díaz-Orueta, U. (2014). Validez ecológica y entornos multitarea en la eva-luación de las funciones ejecutivas. Revista de Neurología, 59(2), 77–87.
Chow, J. Y., Davids, K., Button, C., & Renshaw, I. (2022). Nonlinear pedagogy in skill acquisition. An in-troduction. Routledge.
Conner, M., & Norman, P. (2022). Understanding the intention-behavior gap: The role of intention strength. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 923464. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.923464
Damasio, A. (2018). El extraño orden de las cosas. Editorial Planeta.
Davids, K., Araújo, D., Hristovski, R., Passos, P., & Chow, J. Y. (2012). Ecological dynamics and motor learning design in sport. In N. J. Hodges & A. M. Williams (Eds.), Skill Acquisition in Sport: Re-search, Theory and Practice (2.ª ed., pp. 112–130). Routledge.
Fishbein, M., & Ajzen, I. (1975). Belief, attitude, intention, and behavior: An introduction to theory and research. Addison-Wesley.
Fishbein, M., & Ajzen, I. (2010). Predicting and changing behavior: The reasoned action approach. Tay-lor & Francis. Psychology Press.
Funes, M. J., & Lupiáñez, J. (2003). La teoría atencional de Posner: una tarea para medir las funciones atencionales de Orientación, Alerta y Control Cognitivo y la interacción entre ellas. Psychotema, 15(2), 260-266. https://www.psicothema.com/pdf/1055.pdf
Haksöz, Ç., Katsikopoulos, K. V., & Gigerenzer, G. (2018). Less can be more: How to make operations more flexible and robust with fewer resources. Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science, 28(6), 063102. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5024259
Klein, G., Calderwood, R., & Clinton-Cirocco, A. (2010). Rapid decision making on the fire ground: the original study plus a postscript. Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making, 4, 186-209. https://doi.org/10.1518/155534310X12844000801203
Kotsis, K. T., & Tsiouri, E. (2025). Using proverbs to teach Newton’s three laws in Greece. Journal of Literature Advances, 2(1), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.26855/jla.2025.06.001.
Lau, H. C., & Rogers, R. D., Haggard, P., & Passingham, R. E. (2004). Attention to intention. Science, 303(5661), 1208–1210. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1090973
Lex, H., Essig, K., Knoblauch, A., & Schack, T. (2015). Cognitive Representations and Cognitive Pro-cessing of Team-Specific Tactics in Soccer. PLoS ONE 10(2), e0118219. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0118219
Lloyd, D., Aon, M., & Cortassa, S. (2001). Why Homeodynamics, Not Homeostasis? The Scientific World Journal, 1, 133-45. https://doi.org/10.1100/tsw.2001.20
Luan, S., Reb, J., & Gigerenzer, G. (2019). Ecological rationality: Fast-and-frugal heuristics for manageri-al decision making under uncertainty. Academy of Management Journal, 62(6), 1735–1759. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2018.0172
Luis, J. G., Jiménez, F., & Hernández, A. J. (2012). Análisis estructural y funcional del vóley-playa: orien-taciones para la interpretación de la acción de juego. Acción Motriz, 9(1), 16–36. https://doi.org/10.65330/am.v9i1.49
Macquet, A. C. (2020). Decision-making in sport: looking at and beyond the recognition-primed deci-sion model. In P. M. Salmon, S. McLean, C. Dallat, N. Mansfield, C. Solomon & A. Hulme (Eds.). Human Factors and Ergonomics in Sport (pp. 135-154). CRC Press. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781351060073
Mahecha, J. A., (2022). La práctica del voleibol y la praxiología motriz. Revista Impetus, 16(2), e-910. https://doi.org/10.22579/20114680.910
Marques Filho, C. V., Montagner, P. C., & Ribas, J. F. (2020). Praxiología Motriz y Fútbol: Lógica Interna e indicativos al proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje-entrenamiento. Educación Física y Ciencia, 22(2), e126. https://doi.org/10.24215/23142561e126
Miranda, A., & Torres, H. S. (2015). Un modelo psicológico de la intencionalidad. European Scientific Journal, 11(35), 94–105. https://eujournal.org/index.php/esj/article/view/6784
Mutonyi, H. (2016). Stories, proverbs, and anecdotes as scaffolds for learning science concepts. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 53(6), 943-971. https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21255.
Natsuhara, T., Kato, T., Nakayama, M., Yoshida, T., Sasaki, R., Matsutake, T., & Asai, T. (2020). Decision-Making While Passing and Visual Search Strategy During Ball Receiving in Team Sport Play. Per-ceptual and Motor Skills, 127(2), 468-489. https://doi.org/10.1177/0031512519900057
Naylor, J. C., & Briggs, G. E. (1963). Effects of task complexity and task organization on the relative effi-ciency of part and whole training methods. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65(3), 217–224. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0041060
Petiot, G. H., Bagatin, R., Aquino, R., & Raab, M. (2021). Key characteristics of decisión making in soccer and their implications. Nex Ideas in Psychology, 61, 100846. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2020.100846
Posner, M. I. & Petersen, S. E. (1990). The attention system of the human brain. Annual Review of Neu-roscience, 13, 25-42. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ne.13.030190.000325
Ribas, J. F., Cechella, M. E., Souto, G. N., Aparecida, L., & Iop, L. (2025). Toma de decisiones y decisión motora en balonmano: relaciones de aproximación y distanciamiento con la praxeología moto-ra. Retos, 69, 558–569. https://doi.org/10.47197/retos.v69.107188
Ribas, J. P., Hernández-Moreno, J., Díaz-Díaz, R., Borges-Hernández, P. J., Ruiz-Omeñaca, J. V., & Jaqueira, A. R. (2023). How to understand sports and traditional games and how to apply it to physical education. On the "Goal of Game". Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, 5, 1123340. https://doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2023.1123340
Ribas-Fernandes, J. J. F., Shahnazian, D., Holroyd, C. B., & Botvinick, M. M. (2019). Subgoal- and goal-related reward prediction errors in medial prefrontal cortex. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 31(1), 8–25. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_01341
Ribeiro J., Davids K., Araújo D., Guilherme J., Silva P., & Garganta J. (2019). Exploiting Bi-Directional Self-Organizing Tendencies in Team Sports: The Role of the Game Model and Tactical Principles of Play. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 2213. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02213
Rietveld, E., & Kiverstein, J. (2014). A rich landscape of affordances. Ecological Psychology, 26, 325–352. https://doi.org/10.1080/10407413.2014.958035
Rodríguez, J. P. (2015). Deportes de equipo transgresores. Acción Motriz, 15, 51-62. https://accionmotriz.com/index.php/accionmotriz/article/view/88
Salgado, J. I. (2006). Aportaciones para la caracterización praxiológica del voleibol. En J. Etxebeste y R. Martínez de Santos (Eds.). Investigaciones en praxiología motriz (pp. 85-95). AVAFIEP y De-partamento de Educación Física y Deportiva de la UPV-EHU.
Schröder, T., Stewart, T. C., & Thagard, P. (2014). Intention, emotion, and action: A neural theory based on semantic pointers. Cognitive Science, 38(5), 851–880. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12100
Schuch, S., Dignath, D., Steinhauser, M., & Janczyk, M. (2019). Monitoring and control in multitasking. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 26, 222–240. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-018-1512-z
Sheeran, P., & Webb, T. L. (2016). The intention–behavior gap. Social and Personality Psychology Com-pass, 10(9), 503–518. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12265
Silva, A., Conte, D., & Clemente, F. (2020). Decision-Making in Youth Team-Sports Players: A Systematic Review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(11), 3803. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17113803
Thompson, J. J., McColeman, C. M., Blair, M. R., & Henrey, A. J. (2019). Classic motor chunking theory fails to account for behavioural diversity and speed in a complex naturalistic task. PLoS ONE, 14(6), e0218251. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0218251
Trach, J. E., McKim, T. H., & Desrochers, T. M. (2021). Abstract sequential task control is facilitated by practice and embedded motor sequences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 47(10), 1638–1659. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0001004
Ureña, A., & Moreno, M. P. (2024). Definición de los componentes del juego en voleibol desde un enfo-que sistémico. Retos, 57, 570-580. https://doi.org/10.47197/retos.v57.106594
Vickers, J. N. (2007). Perception, cognition and decision training. Human Kinetics.
Yeom, H. G., Kim, J. S., & Chung, C. K. (2020). Brain mechanisms in motor control during reaching movements: Transition of functional connectivity according to movement states. Scientific Re-ports, 10(1), 567. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-57489-7
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Aurelio Ureña Espa, M. Perla Moreno Arroyo
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and ensure the magazine the right to be the first publication of the work as licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of authorship of the work and the initial publication in this magazine.
- Authors can establish separate additional agreements for non-exclusive distribution of the version of the work published in the journal (eg, to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
- Is allowed and authors are encouraged to disseminate their work electronically (eg, in institutional repositories or on their own website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as to a subpoena more Early and more of published work (See The Effect of Open Access) (in English).
This journal provides immediate open access to its content (BOAI, http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#openaccess) on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. The authors may download the papers from the journal website, or will be provided with the PDF version of the article via e-mail.
