Long- and short-term plastic modeling of action prediction abilities in volleyball

Abstract

Athletes show superior abilities not only in executing complex actions, but also in anticipating others' moves. Here, we explored how visual and motor experiences contribute to forge elite action prediction abilities in volleyball players. Both adult athletes and supporters were more accurate than novices in predicting the fate of volleyball floating services by viewing the initial ball trajectory, while only athletes could base their predictions on body kinematics. Importantly, adolescents assigned to physical practice training improved their ability to predict the fate of the actions by reading body kinematics, while those assigned to the observational practice training improved only in understanding the ball trajectory. The results suggest that physical and observational practice might provide complementary and mutually reinforcing contributions to the superior perceptual abilities of elite athletes. Moreover, direct motor experience is required to establish novel perceptuo-motor representations that are used to predict others' actions ahead of realization.

Development of a new lines of sight analyzer while playing sport

“…Urgesi et al has reported that actual player predict the next movement better than the watching learner in the volleyball learning experiment between two groups: learn by playing and learn by watching others' play [15]. This result also supports our result because we could see the differences between the experienced catcher and the unexperienced catcher in our present experiment results.…”

Simulating and predicting others’ actions

“…While prior literature has shown that perceptual experience alone can impact how we perceive or predict others' actions (e.g., Buchanan & Wright, 2011;Cross et al, 2009Cross et al, , 2011Higuchi, Holle, Roberts, Eickhoff, & Vogt et al, 2012), a number of significant unexplored questions remain regarding the role of physical compared to visual expertise. Here, Urgesi, Savonitto, Fabbro, & Aglioti (2011) demonstrate that adult volleyball players and spectators are more accurate than novices in predicting volleyball serves, but only the players were able to base their predictions on kinematic information. To more fully understand the mechanism behind this finding, Urgesi et al ran a follow up experiment where adolescent volleyball players were taught a new serve either by physical or observational practice.…”

The multiform motor cortical output: Kinematic, predictive and response coding

“…As their greater action simulation abilities could have biased the results, individuals with any motor expertise in playing soccer were excluded from the experiment by means of a pre-screening procedure. Athletes, in fact, present superior abilities in predicting and anticipating other players' actions Aglioti et al, 2008;Makris & Urgesi, 2014;Sebanz & Shiffrar, 2009;Tomeo, Cesari, Aglioti, & Urgesi, 2012;Urgesi et al, 2012;Weissensteiner et al, 2008). Notably, also observational practice may contribute to action prediction abilities (Urgesi, Savonitto, Fabbro, & Aglioti, 2012), and soccer is a quite familiar sport.…”