Author's personal copy A dynamical system perspective to understanding badminton singles game play Jia Yi Chow a,⇑ , Ludovic Seifert b , Romain Hérault c , Shannon Jing Yi Chia d , Miriam Chang Yi Lee a a Physical Education & Sports Science, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore b Centre d’Etude des Transformations des Activités Physiques et Sportives (CETAPS), Faculty of Sports Sciences, University of Rouen, France c Laboratoire d’Informatique, du Traitement de l’Information et des Systèmes (LITIS), National Institute of Applied Science (INSA de Rouen), France d Sport Science and Management, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore article info Article history: Available online 25 September 2013 PsycINFO classification: 2300 Keywords: Dynamical systems Badminton Inter-player coupling Coordination Game play abstract By altering the task constraints of cooperative and competitive game contexts in badminton, insights can be obtained from a dynamical systems perspective to investigate the underlying pro- cesses that results in either a gradual shift or transition of playing patterns. Positional data of three pairs of skilled female badminton players (average age 20.5 ± 1.38 years) were captured and ana- lyzed. Local correlation coefficient, which provides information on the relationship of players’ displacement data, between each pair of players was computed for angle and distance from base position. Speed scalar product was in turn established from speed vectors of the players. The results revealed two patterns of playing behaviors (i.e., in-phase and anti-phase patterns) for movement displacement. Anti-phase relation was the dominant coupling pat- tern for speed scalar relationships among the pairs of players. Speed scalar product, as a collective variable, was different between cooperative and competitive plays with a greater variabil- ity in amplitude seen in competitive plays leading to a winning point. The findings from this study provide evidence for increasing stroke variability to perturb existing stable patterns of play and highlights the potential for speed scalar product to be a collective variable to distinguish different patterns of play (e.g., cooperative and competitive). Ó 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 0167-9457/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.humov.2013.07.016 ⇑ Corresponding author. Address: Physical Education & Sports Science, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technolog- ical University, 1 Nanyang Walk, Singapore 637616, Singapore. Tel.: +65 6790 3692; fax: +65 6896 9260. E-mail address: jiayi.chow@nie.edu.sg (J.Y. Chow). Human Movement Science 33 (2014) 70–84 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Human Movement Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/humov