Can Slow-Motion Footage of Forehand Strokes Be Used to Immediately Improve Anticipatory Judgments in Tennis?

Abstract

Slow-motion footage of sports actions is widely used as a visual learning tool in observing the dynamic motor behaviors of athletes. Recent studies on action observation have reported that extending the observation time in slow-motion footage provides benefits of understanding the intention of an opponent’s action, at least when observing rapid movements. As such, the use of slow-motion footage may have the potential to improve the anticipatory judgments of an opponent’s action outcome without training (or feedback). To verify this possibility, we examined the effects of the replay speed of slow-motion footage on the anticipatory judgments of shot directions and recognition of kinematic positions of opponents’ forehand strokes in tennis. Nine skilled and nine novice tennis players were asked to anticipate the direction of their opponent’s shots (left or right) and then attempted to recognize proximal (trunk center) and distal (ball) kinematic positions. Computer graphic animations of forehand strokes were used as visual stimuli, which were presented at four different replay speeds (normal, three-quarter, half, and quarter speeds). We failed to show the immediate effect of the use of slow-motion footage on the anticipatory performance of the skilled and novice players, although the anticipatory performance of the skilled players was superior to that of the novice players. Instead, we found an effect of the use of slow-motion footage in terms of promoting recognition of important kinematic cues (trunk center) for effective anticipation by skilled players. Moreover, no significant correlations were observed between the anticipatory judgments and motion recognition in all experimental conditions. These results suggest that even if the use of slow-motion footage enhances the recognition of key kinematic cues, it may not immediately improve anticipatory judgments in tennis.

Action Observation Combined With Conventional Training Improves the Rugby Lineout Throwing Performance: A Pilot Study

“…We acknowledge that our findings are related primarily to this motor skill, but other recent studies (Breslin et al, 2006; Hayes et al, 2007; Hodges et al, 2007; Horn et al, 2007), supporting our results, suggest the possible efficacy of AO training in other complex motor tasks in sport. Another limitation concerns the small number of subjects recruited in this study; however, in the literature, often pilot studies, testing AO training, have been conducted and published with a small number of participants (e.g., Sakadjian et al, 2014; Fukuhara et al, 2018; Unenaka et al, 2018). Although we are aware that the involvement of a larger cohort would have strengthened the results obtained, however, giving the homogeneity of the two groups in terms of both expertise, and performance and kinematic parameters at baseline (T0), we were able to detect clear differences with an effect size from small to large values, implying the number of subjects was sufficient for providing significant results from this pilot study.…”

Topical Review: Perceptual-cognitive Skills, Methods, and Skill-based Comparisons in Interceptive Sports

“…Anticipation Badminton, [45][46][47]64,[89][90][91][92] baseball, 60,[93][94][95][96] cricket, 3,48,49,70,71,[97][98][99][100] handball GK, 4,87,101,102 soccer GK, 50,73,74,103,104 squash, 51 table tennis, [75][76][77] tennis 11,53,54,58,71,83,[105][106][107][108][109][110][111][112][113] Baseball 84,114 Baseball,…”

Expertise differences in a 2D animation simulation decision-making task: The influence of presentation speed on performance

“…They reported that for certain types of situations, such as contact of two players in a foul action or location of a foul (inside or outside the penalty box) slow-motion video can be a helpful tool. In another study by Fukuhara et al (2018), slow-motion footage was used to assess and train the anticipation skills of elite and novice tennis players. Although the results failed to show any effect for the use of slow-motion training on anticipation skills, researchers reported superior performance of elite tennis players compared to novices' performance on the task.…”