In the elite domain of interactive sports, athletes who demonstrate a left preference (e.g., holding a weapon with the left hand in fencing or boxing in a 'southpaw' stance) seem overrepresented. ...Such excess indicates a performance advantage and was also interpreted as evidence in favour of frequency-dependent selection mechanisms to explain the maintenance of left-handedness in humans. To test for an overrepresentation, the incidence of athletes' lateral preferences is typically compared with an expected ratio of left- to right-handedness in the normal population. However, the normal population reference values did not always relate to the sport-specific tasks of interest, which may limit the validity of reports of an excess of 'left-oriented' athletes. Here we sought to determine lateral preferences for various sport-specific tasks (e.g., baseball batting, boxing) in the normal population and to examine the relationship between these preferences and handedness. To this end, we asked 903 participants to indicate their lateral preferences for sport-specific and common tasks using a paper-based questionnaire. Lateral preferences varied considerably across the different sport tasks and we found high variation in the relationship between those preferences and handedness. In contrast to unimanual tasks (e.g., fencing or throwing), for bimanually controlled actions such as baseball batting, shooting in ice hockey or boxing the incidence of left preferences was considerably higher than expected from the proportion of left-handedness in the normal population and the relationship with handedness was relatively low. We conclude that (i) task-specific reference values are mandatory for reliably testing for an excess of athletes with a left preference, (ii) the term 'handedness' should be more cautiously used within the context of sport-related laterality research and (iii) observation of lateral preferences in sports may be of limited suitability for the verification of evolutionary theories of handedness.
When anticipating an opponent's action intention, athletes may rely on both kinematic and contextual cues. Here we show that patterns of previous action outcomes (i.e., a contextual cue) bias visual ...anticipation of action outcome in subsequent trials. In two video-based experiments, skilled players and novices were presented with volleyball attacks stopping 360ms (Exp. 1) or 280ms (Exp. 2) before an attacker's hand-ball-contact and they were asked to predict the type of attack (smash or lob). Attacks were presented block-wise with six attacks per block. The fifth trial served as target trial where we presented identical attacks to control kinematic cues. We varied the outcomes of the preceding four attacks under three conditions: lobs only, smashes only or an alternating pattern of attack outcomes. In Exp. 1, skilled players but not novices were less accurate and responded later in target trials that were incongruent vs. congruent with preceding patterns. In Exp. 2, where the task was easier, another group of novices demonstrated a similar congruence effect for accuracy but not response time. Collectively, findings indicate that participants tended to preferentially expect the continuation of an attack pattern, while possibly attaching less importance to kinematic cues. Thus, overreliance on pattern continuation may be detrimental to anticipation in situations an action's outcome does not correspond to the pattern. From a methodological viewpoint, comparison of novices' performance in Exp. 1 and 2 suggests that task difficulty may be critical as to whether contextual cue effects can be identified in novices.
•We examined attack outcome pattern-induced bias in visual anticipation.•Performance differed in target trials incongruent vs. congruent with patterns.•In incongruent trials, predictions were less accurate and tended to be made later.•The effect was more distinct in skilled players but also evident in novices.•Overreliance on patterns of previous attack outcomes may impair anticipation.
Anticipation in sports is commonly investigated using perception-action uncoupled methods, thus raising questions regarding transferability of findings to the field. The aim of this study was to ...investigate the influence of different degrees of perception-action coupling on anticipation in handball goalkeeping. Advanced, intermediate and novice handball goalkeepers watched videos of throws on the goal and were asked to anticipate throw direction via key press (perception-action artificial condition) and via natural movement response (perception-action simulated condition). Results reveal overall superior performance in the artificial compared to the simulated condition. Skill-based differences, however, were descriptively more pronounced in the simulated condition compared to the artificial condition. The findings further highlight the importance of more representative research methods to unravel perceptual-cognitive skill in sports.
Negative frequency-dependent effects rather than innate predispositions may provide left-handers with an advantage in one-on-one fighting situations. Support mainly comes from cross-sectional studies ...which found significantly enhanced left-hander frequencies among elite athletes exclusively in interactive sports such as baseball, cricket, fencing and tennis. Since professional athletes' training regimes continuously improve, however, an important unsolved question is whether the left-handers' advantage in individual sports like tennis persists over time. To this end, we longitudinally tracked left-hander frequencies in year-end world rankings (men: 1973-2011, ladies: 1975-2011) and at Grand Slam tournaments (1968-2011) in male and female tennis professionals. Here we show that the positive impact of left-handed performance on high achievement in elite tennis was moderate and decreased in male professionals over time and was almost absent in female professionals. For both sexes, left-hander frequencies among year-end top 10 players linearly decreased over the period considered. Moreover, left-handedness was, however, no longer seems associated with higher probability of attaining high year-end world ranking position in male professionals. In contrast, cross-sectional data on left-hander frequencies in male and female amateur players suggest that a left-handers' advantage may still occur on lower performance levels. Collectively, our data is in accordance with the frequency-dependent hypothesis since reduced experience with left-handers in tennis is likely to be compensated by players' professionalism.
Left-to-right readers are assumed to demonstrate a left-to-right bias in aesthetic preferences and performance evaluation. Here we tested the hypothesis that such bias occurs in left-to-right reading ...laypeople and gymnastic judges (
= 48 each) when asked to select the more beautiful image from a picture pair showing gymnastic or non-gymnastic actions (Experiment 1) and to evaluate videos of gymnasts' balance beam performances (Experiment 2). Overall, laypeople demonstrated a stronger left-to-right bias than judges. Unlike judges, laypeople rated images with left-to-right trajectory as more beautiful than content-wise identical images with right-to-left trajectory (Experiment 1). Also, laypeople tended to award slightly more points to videos showing left-to-right as opposed to right-to-left oriented actions (Experiment 2); however, in contrast to initial predictions the effect was weak and statistically unreliable. Collectively, judges, when considered as a group, seem less prone to directional bias than laypeople, thus tentatively suggesting that directionality may be an issue for
skilled but not for
judging. Possible mechanisms underlying the skill effect in Experiment 1 and the absence of clear bias in Experiment 2 are discussed alongside propositions for a broadening of perspectives in future research.
Hill and Barton (2005) showed that fighters in tae kwon do, boxing, and wrestling who wore red jerseys during the 2004 Olympic Games won more often than those wearing blue jerseys. Regarding these ...results, this study investigated the effects of jersey color during a combat situation on fighters' physical parameters of strength and heart rate. An artificial, experimental combat situation was created in which the color of sport attire was assigned randomly. Fourteen pairs of male athletes matched for weight, height, and age had to fight each other: once in a red jersey and once in a blue. Heart rate (before, during, and after the fight) and strength (before the fight) were tested wearing the blue and the red jerseys. Participants wearing red jerseys had significantly higher heart rates and significantly higher pre-contest values on the strength test. Results showed that participants' body functions are influenced by wearing red equipment.
We examined the mechanisms underpinning anticipation of ground strokes in tennis by perturbing the dynamical information presented at different body regions (+ racket). We interchanged the dynamics ...at selected regions with those from strokes played to the opposite side of the court. Skilled and less skilled tennis players were required to anticipate stroke direction when presented with filmed sequences in stick figure format. There was a significant Skill
×
Condition interaction. Skilled players reported lower accuracy scores when both proximal (i.e., shoulders, hips, and legs) and distal (i.e., arm
+
racket) cues were interchanged, whereas the less skilled players showed a significant decrement only in the arm
+
racket condition. Findings suggest that skilled players rely on a more ‘global’ than ‘local’ perceptual strategy. The greatest decrement in performance and lowest response accuracy scores were reported in the arm
+
racket condition, highlighting the importance of end-effector information when anticipating opponents’ intentions.
Whether a coach dismissal during the mid-season has an impact on the subsequent team performance has long been a subject of controversial scientific discussion. Here we find a clear-cut answer to ...this question by using a recently developed statistical framework for the team fitness and by analyzing the first two moments of the effect of a coach dismissal. We can show with an unprecedented small statistical error for the German soccer league that dismissing the coach within the season has basically no effect on the subsequent performance of a team. Changing the coach between two seasons has no effect either. Furthermore, an upper bound for the actual influence of the coach on the team fitness can be estimated. Beyond the immediate relevance of this result, this study may lead the way to analogous studies for exploring the effect of managerial changes, e.g., in economic terms.
Visual understanding of others performing an action depends on both an observer's visual and motor experience with that action. With regard to visual anticipation of lateralized action outcome in ...one-on-one confrontative situations, however, the particular role of motor experience is poorly understood. Here, we considered handedness to test the laterality-specific contribution of visual and motor experience to action outcome anticipation. In two experiments, 55 left- and 114 right-handed handball players predicted the outcome (Exp. 1: throw direction; Exp. 2: type of throw) of videos showing left- and right-handed penalty-throws viewed from a goalkeeper's perspective. Analyses reveal that left- and right-handed participants performed similarly and had more difficulties anticipating the outcome direction, but not type of throw, of left- compared to right-handed penalties. Thus, albeit left- and right-handers differ in their lateralized motor experience, this does not seem to be sufficient to facilitate visual anticipation of same-handed action outcome. Instead, findings lend further support to the specificity of perceptual learning and visual experience arising from both left- and right-handers' predominant exposure to more common right-handed movements.
As compared with their prevalence in the general population, left-handers are overrepresented in the expert domain of many interactive sports. This study examined to what extent this is due to ...negative perceptual frequency effects—that is, whether the greater frequency of tennis matches with right-handed opponents makes it possible to discriminate the stroke movements of right-handed players more precisely. Fifty-four right-handed and 54 left-handed males in three equal-sized groups of varying levels of tennis expertise (national league experts, local league intermediates, and novices) completed a tennis anticipation test in which they had to predict the subsequent direction of an opponent’s temporally occluded tennis strokes on a computer screen. The results showed that all three groups were better at predicting the direction of strokes by right-handed players. This supports the hypothesis that the overrepresentation of left-handers in the expert domain is partly due to
perceptual frequency effects
.
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