This book presents the proceedings of the 9th Asian South Pacific Association of Sport Psychology International Congress (ASPASP) 2022, Kuching, Malaysia, which entails the different sporting innovation themes, namely, Applied Sport and Social Psychology, Health and Exercise, Motor Control and Learning, Counselling and Clinical Psychology, Biomechanics, Data Mining and Machine Learning in Sports amongst others. It presents the state-of-the-art technological advancements towards the aforesaid themes and provides a platform to shape the future direction of sport science, specifically in the field sports and exercise psychology.  ​

This brief highlights the association of different performance variables that influences archery performance and the employment of different machine learning algorithms in the identification of potential archers. The sport of archery is often associated with a myriad of performance indicators namely bio-physiological, psychological, anthropometric as well as physical fitness. Traditionally, the determination of potential archers is carried out by means of conventional statistical techniques. Nonetheless, such methods often fall short in associating non-linear relationships between the variables. This book explores the notion of machine learning that is capable of mitigating the aforesaid issue. This book is valuable for coaches and managers in identifying potential archers during talent identification programs.

Cancer is the leading cause of mortality in most, if not all, countries around the globe. It is worth noting that the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2019 estimated that cancer is the primary or secondary leading cause of death in 112 of 183 countries for individuals less than 70 years old, which is alarming. In addition, cancer affects socioeconomic development as well. The diagnostics of cancer are often carried out by medical experts through medical imaging; nevertheless, it is not without misdiagnosis owing to a myriad of reasons. With the advancement of technology and computing power, the use of state-of-the-art computational methods for the accurate diagnosis of cancer is no longer far-fetched. In this brief, the diagnosis of four types of common cancers, i.e., breast, lung, oral and skin, are evaluated with different state-of-the-art feature-based transfer learning models. It is expected that the findings in this book are insightful to various stakeholders in the diagnosis of cancer.

This book explores the application of data mining and machine learning techniques in studying the activity pattern, decision-making skills, misconducts, and actions resulting in the intervention of VAR in European soccer leagues referees. The game of soccer at the elite level is characterised by intense competitions, a high level of intensity, technical, and tactical skills coupled with a long duration of play. Referees are required to officiate the game and deliver correct and indisputable decisions throughout the duration of play. The increase in the spatial and temporal task demands of the game necessitates that the referees must respond and cope with the physiological and psychological loads inherent in the game. The referees are also required to deliver an accurate decision and uphold the rules and regulations of the game during a match. These demands and attributes make the work of referees highly complex. The increasing pace and complexity of the game resulted in the introduction of the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) to assist and improve the decision-making of on-field referees. Despite the integration of VAR into the current refereeing system, the performances of the referees are yet to be error-free. Machine learning coupled with data mining techniques has shown to be vital in providing insights from a large dataset which could be used to draw important inferences that can aid decision-making for diagnostics purposes and overall performance improvement. A total of 6232 matches from 5 consecutive seasons officiated across the English Premier League, Spanish LaLiga, Italian Serie A as well as the German Bundesliga was studied. It is envisioned that the findings in this book could be useful in recognising the activity pattern of top-class referees, that is non-trivial for the stakeholders in devising strategies to further enhance the performances of referees as well as empower talent identification experts with pertinent information for mapping out future high-performance referees.

This brief highlights the use of various Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to evaluate training and competitional strategies in Volleyball, as well as to identify high-performance players in the sport. Several psychological elements/strategies coupled with human performance parameters are discussed in view to ascertain their impact on performance in elite Volleyball competitions. It presents key performance indicators as well as human performance parameters that can be used in future evaluation of team performance and players. The details outlined in this brief are vital to coaches, club managers, talent identification experts, performance analysts as well as other important stakeholders in the evaluation of performance and to foster improvement in this sport.

This book highlights the fundamental association between aquaculture and engineering in classifying fish hunger behaviour by means of machine learning techniques. Understanding the underlying factors that affect fish growth is essential, since they have implications for higher productivity in fish farms. Computer vision and machine learning techniques make it possible to quantify the subjective perception of hunger behaviour and so allow food to be provided as necessary. The book analyses the conceptual framework of motion tracking, feeding schedule and prediction classifiers in order to classify the hunger state, and proposes a system comprising an automated feeder system, image-processing module, as well as machine learning classifiers. Furthermore, the system substitutes conventional, complex modelling techniques with a robust, artificial intelligence approach. The findings presented are of interest to researchers, fish farmers, and aquaculture technologist wanting to gain insights into the productivity of fish and fish behaviour.

This brief highlights the application of performance analysis tools in data acquisition, and various machine learning algorithms for evaluating team performance as well as talent identification in beach soccer and sepak takraw. Numerous performance indicators and human performance parameters are considered based on their relevance to each sport. The findings presented here demonstrate that the key performance indicators as well as human performance parameters can be used in the future evaluation of team performance as well as talent identification in these sports. Accordingly, they offer a valuable resource for coaches, club managers, talent identification experts, performance analysts and other relevant stakeholders involved in performance assessments.