Why do bad balls get wickets? The role of congruent and incongruent information in anticipation

Abstract

Skilled anticipation is underpinned by the use of kinematic and contextual information. However, few researchers have examined what happens when contextual information suggests an outcome that is different from the event that follows. We aimed to bridge this gap by manipulating the relationship between contextual information and final ball location in a cricket-batting task. We predicted that when contextual information is congruent with the eventual outcome then anticipation would be facilitated. In contrast, when contextual information is incongruent, this would lead to a confirmation bias on kinematic information and result in decreased anticipation accuracy. We expected this effect to be larger in skilled performers who are more able to utilise context. Skilled and less-skilled cricket batters anticipated deliveries presented using a temporally occluded video-based task. We created conditions whereby contextual information and event outcome were either congruent or incongruent. There was a significant skill by condition interaction (p < 0.05). The skilled group anticipated significantly more accurately than the less-skilled group on the congruent trials. Both groups anticipated less accurately on incongruent trials, with the skilled participants being more negatively affected. Skilled performers prioritise contextual information and confirmation bias affects the use of kinematic information available later in the action.

On the Influence of Action Preference on Female Players' Gaze Behavior During Defense of Volleyball Attacks

“…In the first block, both groups opted equally frequently for diagonal strokes, in the second block participants of group PR showed more frequent decisions in favor of the instructed direction. These findings go in line with other studies (Mann et al, 2014;Loffing et al, 2015b;Runswick et al, 2019) and support the idea that instructing about opponents' action preferences influences visual anticipation. While the exact mechanism underlying that effect remain unclear, recent explanations center around a Bayesian approach (Loffing and Hagemann, 2014;Gredin et al, 2019;Helm et al, 2020) or heuristics such as confirmation bias (Rajsic et al, 2015;Runswick et al, 2019).…”

“…Moreover, from pre-to post-test accuracy increased against the thrower with congruent behavior (i.e., preference in tests and training), but it decreased against the thrower with incongruent behavior (i.e., no preference in tests but in training). Performance of the N-PR-group did not markedly differ from pre-to post-test, suggesting that preference information pickedup during training is likely to explain performance changes in the PR-group (for similar findings see e.g., Loffing et al, 2015b;Gredin et al, 2018;Runswick et al, 2019).…”

“…Previous research suggests that contextual information can have a positive or negative influence on anticipation, depending on whether the occurring event is congruent or incongruent with the expected event based on prior contextual information (Mann et al, 2014;Loffing et al, 2015b;Gredin et al, 2018;Runswick et al, 2019). The underlying perceptual-cognitive mechanisms of this effect, however, remain vastly unclear.…”

“…Between blocks, one group (PR) received information that both attackers had an action preference in favor of the diagonal direction, while another group (N-PR) received information that the attacks were evenly distributed. For group PR but not group N-PR, we expected decision behavior to change in favor of contextual information and prediction accuracy to increase for congruent events and to decrease for incongruent events (Mann et al, 2014;Loffing et al, 2015b;Gredin et al, 2018;Runswick et al, 2019). Regarding gaze measures, due to the exploratory nature of this study with regard to possible effects at the visual-perceptual level, no hypotheses were formulated a priori.…”

“…Because contextual information is available before anticipationrelevant kinematics unfold (Cañal-Bruland and Mann, 2015), this could trigger an expectation that leads to a confirmation bias for incongruent events, ultimately resulting in a performance decrease. In tentative support of this idea, using an anticipation task in cricket Runswick et al (2019) found that skilled batters were more susceptible to the effect than less-skilled batters, possibly because the former are more reliant on and better in using contextual information.…”