Anticipatory judgements associated with vision of an opponent's end-effector: An approach by motion perturbation and spatial occlusion. Issue 5 (May 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Ida, Hirofumi; Fukuhara, Kazunobu; Ishii, Motonobu; Inoue, Tetsuri
• Is Part Of: Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. Volume 72:Issue 5(2019)
• Page Start: 1131
• Page End: 1140
• Publication Date: 2019-05
• Subjects: Perceptual skill -- prediction -- tennis -- computer graphics -- motion simulation; Psychology, Experimental -- Periodicals; Psychophysiology -- Periodicals; Psychology, Comparative -- Periodicals; 150.72405
• DOI: 10.1177/1747021818782419
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1747-0218

Abstract

This study was aimed at determining how the visual information of an end-effector (racket) and the intermediate extremity (arm) of a tennis server contribute to the receiver's anticipatory judgement of ball direction. In all, 15 experienced tennis players and 15 novice counterparts viewed a spatially occluded computer graphics animation of a tennis serve (no-occlusion, racket-occlusion, and body-occlusion) and made anticipatory judgements of ball direction on a visual analogue scale (VAS). The patterns of the serve motions were generated by a simulation technique that computationally perturbs the rotation speed of the selected racket-arm joint (forearm pronation and elbow extension) on a captured serve motion. The results suggested that the anticipatory judgements were monotonically attuned with the perturbation rate of the forearm pronation speed excepting under the conditions of the racket-occlusion model. Although such attunements were not observed in the elbow perturbation conditions, the results of correlation analysis indicated that the residual information in the spatially occluded models had a similar effect to the no-occlusion model within the individual experienced participants. The findings support the notion that end-effector (racket) provides deterministic cues for anticipation, as well as imply that players are able to benefit from the relative motion of an intermediate extremity (elbow extension).