Abstract
Table tennis players at the regional, collegiate, and beginner levels were tested for their ability to anticipate the direction of the incoming ball by altering the consistency of their muscle groups and the ball’s path throughout a match. Participants tried to predict where the ball would land by examining video footage that showed either a congruent or an incongruent trajectory. They had to choose from one of two probable locations to predict the future. The percent accuracy and pertinent indices (d-prime, criteria, and effect size) were computed for each condition. When using kinematics data to determine ball direction, experienced table tennis players (both regional and college level) performed better than novices. Even yet, athletes at the regional level and those attending a four-year university were almost indistinguishable from one another. According to this research, more experienced table tennis players were shown to have a greater sense of their opponents’ movements. The current results show that strong action prediction in racquet sports may need a “baseline” degree of motor competence. Other motor techniques seem to have minimal effect on these tasks.
Table tennis players performed better in Experiment 2 if they had access to visual and acoustic information (i.e., when players wore headphones). Both seasoned table tennis players and newbies to the sport were affected by this. Both trials show that auditory inputs influence athletes’ performance.
Literature Review
Considering the tight time constraints and fast-moving materials in racquet sports, effective ball interception requires high reaction anticipation skills. It has been shown that more experienced players in the sports of tennis and badminton are better able than novices to anticipate their opponent’s actions. This is especially experiments on beginner and veteran racquet-sport players found that the latter had more excellent action anticipation skills, suggesting they could use more sophisticated data about their opponents’ movements before the ball ever makes contact (Shangguan & Che, 2018). As a result, racquet-sport players excel in anticipating future actions by mentally simulating the effects of previously witnessed, known events. When used to imitate observed behaviors and produce results, these representations may use internal models developed via experience to achieve that outcome.
The temporal occlusion paradigm has been employed in several anticipation experiments in which the display of athletic activity is stopped at varying durations from commencement. In such a case, participants are asked to make educated guesses or forecasts based on an incomplete video. Experts are better at determining the ball’s trajectory in the video that includes occlusion before racquetball contact than amateurs. It has been proposed that the moment of racquet-ball contact marks the end of these investigations of temporal occlusion, with data collected before and after that point representing body kinematics and ball flight trajectory, respectively. Research repeatedly shows that experienced athletes are better at predicting the actions of rival players by utilizing kinematic information before the ball is launched than less experienced. For example, when it comes to tennis, the racket arm and the trunk’s dynamic positioning can predict an opponent’s shot direction. Many physical clues and fluid placement of the racket arm may be credited for this ability to predict an opponent’s shot path.
This paradigm has previously misled experts more frequently than novices in incongruent trials. The present investigation will use a complete video to prevent occluding soon after the ball-racquet/body interaction. Several recent research has also distinguished between the extremes of the skill continuum regarding anticipatory ability. Players with more experience could benefit from the visual information, while those with less experience couldn’t.
It was also shown that club and young cricketers attain accuracy levels over chance only when the ball release occlusion was absent. The authors also indicate that comparisons between high- and low-skilled players are essential to advance theoretical and applied understanding. However, there have been no studies on how racquet sports players utilize kinematics and ball information to anticipate their opponents’ moves (Shangguan & Che, 2018). The current research used a more experienced set of players to better grasp the internal model of anticipatory skills.
Perceptual anticipation may be used to anticipate the result of an action sequence by developing internal models based on motor competence. However, these mental models may fail when confronted with inconsistent or contradictory facts. Experiments on deception have demonstrated that experienced individuals perform poorly under congruent situations (i.e., typical) in which mechanics and ball flight details are consistent, suggesting that the more informed people prefer to maintain superior performance under concordant circumstances (i.e., normal).
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Analysis
The replies from the participants were gathered via the use of an e-prime. Because all comments were sent after the film had concluded, the viewer’s response time was not considered. Consequently, individuals who were 100 percent correct in the congruent condition but 100 percent wrong in the incongruent condition were excluded from the research candidacy. As a result, one novice participant (a guy) and three college participants (two men) were excluded from participating.
Using signal detection theory analysis, our study employed a conventional adaption of the 2AFC task to determine the d-prime and response criterion. We were aware that the accuracy % in 2AFC tasks might be mistaken for a choice, especially in the first four blocks. Correct responses are seen as “hits” incongruent trials, whereas wrong responses are regarded as “misses” in incongruent trials; correct responses are regarded as “correct rejections” in incongruent trials, while incorrect responses are treated as “false alarms” in incongruent trials. A response percentage of z-scores was calculated for each answer and then deducted from that which matched the hit and false alarm rates. Participants’ ability to notice discrepancies in the kinematic patterns of the various films increased as the d’ score increased, as can be seen in the table below. The coefficient c was also determined, indicating whether or not there is a response bias in supplying a given answer. To arrive at the c values, we multiplied the averages of the z scores related to the hit and wrong alarm rates by 0.5.
There were three one-way ANOVAs, with each Group as the between-group variable. Accuracy (hit), incommensurate situation (correct rejection), and overall) effect sizes were estimated using the partial t-test for the mixed ball cue blocks, and precision estimations were derived for accuracy in the empty ball cue blocks based on d’ and response criteria. SPSS Statistics 20.0 (IBM, Somers, USA) was used for the statistical analyses, and a significance threshold of 0.05 was used. It was necessary to perform the Bonferroni adjustment with p-values lowered to 0.05 by SPSS and the 95% confidence interval when significant main effects were found after the post hoc testing.
Results
Group had a significant one-way ANOVA effect on congruent accuracy (hit in Table 2), with F (2, 68) = 9.040, p=0.0001 and R2 = 0.210. Beginners’ accuracy was much lower than college and regional players (p.021) (further research). A p-value of.630 indicates no significant variations between college and regional players in terms of skill level.
Groups did not vary significantly when conditions were out of alignment. Mixed cues have a major impact on performance. There was a [F (2, 68) = 8.446, p =.001, 2 =.199]. Using more advanced statistical approaches, it was shown that novices had a lower overall accuracy rate than college players (p =.002) and regional players (p =.002). In contrast, there were no significant differences between the two groups of experienced individuals (p = 1.000).
Using more sophisticated methods, it was shown that beginners had the lowest accuracy of any group (p =.002). The findings from college and regional players (p.001) were comparable, indicating that seasoned table tennis players are more responsive to orientation than beginners.
According to the results of the one-way Analysis, the change in response bias did not affect anticipatory performance for criterion response C.
Provincial and university players were more precise than novices based on the kinematic information offered by the table tennis serve. This study’s findings are in line with those of earlier sport-specific research. Expert athletes such as tennis players and cricketers (Müller et al., 2006) showed more extraordinary anticipatory ability than novices based on advanced temporal occlusion signals. Still, this research provided new evidence on using full-video kinematic information by experienced athletes. Predicted consequences for practical actions are shown in an internal model that develops due to greater motor (Shangguan & Che, 2018). This research provided complete kinematic information, showing that the capacity to predict the conclusion of a motor sequence is not reliant on the completeness of the kinematic information but rather on motor competence.
As hypothesized, the kinematic cues exercise did not reveal any differences between regional and college players. These findings directly conflict with the results of perceptual anticipation tests done on persons of all skill levels. At the point of ball release and early in the ball’s flight, the temporal occlusion paradigm showed better adaptations by highly gifted players than less competent players. The current study needed less information to perform the anticipation task since the current study supplied all of that data. Another problem is that the two-choice assignment did not consider table tennis players’ need for information on the ball’s spin or landing distance. However, this research shows that the data reveal that regional and collegiate players’ abilities may not be reflected in ball orientation prediction.
The new research offered a significant addition to the anticipation-testing paradigm compared to earlier investigations. A complete video of a person’s body kinematics and the trajectory of a ball was used to examine the validity of mental models of actions developed following a direct sensory practice. Initial findings showed that all participants’ responses were biased in the same way, in line with prior research. All participants may have been more biased in favor of the direction in which the ball flew, as shown by their c values (Zhao et al., 2018).
Contrary to the findings of earlier studies, which showed that highly competent athletes preferred kinematic information for anticipatory assessment.
Results in terms of how people respond to them. A three-group criterion for D-prime reliability: Efficiency of congruent conditions, the correctness of incongruent conditions, and accuracy rate of D-prime value; three-group criterion (novices, college players, and regional players).
Higher-skilled players did not vary from lower-skilled players in their criteria response. Participants may have been asked to pay more attention to biomechanical data in this study than in previous deception tests, which may have rendered the anticipated phase of this trial more critical to the participant’s goals.
In the congruent condition, table tennis players (both regional and college) demonstrated improved accuracy, total accuracy in the mixed-cues test, and a more critical ability to discriminate between biomechanical data and ball path. Experiments have shown that people who have performed similar tasks before can accurately replicate an action using their internal model of body kinematics. Statistically, there was no significant difference in the mean of experience between players in the region and college players. Another study revealed no substantial difference between expert and near-expert baseball hitters, but experienced players and beginners differed significantly. When comparing two comparably talented groups, the measurement may not be sensitive enough (Zhao et al., 2018). A certain “baseline” quantity of motor expertise in a given sport may be necessary for successful action anticipating. Increasing one’s motor proficiency does not improve one’s ability to anticipate actions.
In unpredictable circumstances, however, the accuracy was different from our projections. Prior study has shown that expert table tennis players use body kinematics to make predictions, while novices rely more on the ball’s trajectory. Therefore, we predicted that experienced players would perform better than novices.
The prediction was challenging in this investigation because of the interference caused by the ball’s trajectory, which had to be reduced. Table tennis players lost their anticipatory benefit in the experimental condition, which resulted in the intervention of ball data on these veteran guys despite their greater accuracy in the kinematics job. This finding implies that table tennis players employ more than just body kinematics to anticipate the ball’s direction. However, further study is required to validate and build on this theory.
Discussion
Table tennis players’ impressions of their body mechanics and ball velocity were examined in this research. When the ball signals were available, we wanted to examine whether persons with and without previous experience with kinematic cues could do the task successfully. Using kinematic information, table tennis players (at the regional and collegiate levels) were much better at predicting than beginners. However, the enhanced skill was lost completely when the ball trajectory was out of sync with the kinematic information.
Regional- and college-level table tennis teams have a significantly different gender distribution than the other two categories. This is primarily due to enrollment constraints and uneven gender distribution across the teams. Previously, research has shown that men are more likely to set their criteria for deception detection much further than females (Zhao et al., 2018), which might influence the present findings. More research is needed to further understand the link between skill level and gender in predicting ability.
We found that the main difference between experienced and non-experienced table tennis players was their anticipation ability and that there were no differences between low – and high table tennis players when we compared their results to those of the non-experienced Group. The existing paradigm is probably not sensitive enough to identify variations amongst athletes with more minor variances in skill level than the average. Additionally, this might lead to new concerns in future studies, such as investigating additional characteristics of the serving movement, such as ball rotation and landing location. Because of the critical requirement for quick ball direction recognition in table tennis, reaction time might be a more sensitive measurement. Along with a thorough understanding of table tennis, more research into cognitive-motor abilities like perception-action coupling (how the motor response and interaction interact with the perceptual system) and ADHD is required (Zhao et al., 2018).
Conclusion
Both regional and collegiate players could correctly predict action outcomes based on kinematics knowledge compared to non-experienced persons. Using kinematic information, experienced table tennis players could better distinguish between the observed ball trajectory and the kinematic information they were given. Using inaccurate information about the ball’s trajectory removed this more extraordinary performance, revealing that experienced people use the ball’s trajectory when predicting. How much motor experience do you need in order to be able to predict what will happen? Because there was no distinction between regional and college athletes, more experience may not be helpful in this situation.
There are significant behavioral advantages among professional tennis players when it comes to anticipating the batting route (T0) and the ball landing time (T1) (T1). The second-grade athletes’ N1 and N2 amplitudes were significantly greater than those of the professional Group. Oblique-line anticipation at the frontal electrode site during the T0 and T1 periods resulted in less significant N2 amplitudes. P2 and P3 amplitudes were higher in the professional Group than in the second-grade athlete group. At T0 and T1, in particular, the expert group was more accurate in their evaluations. They used less brainpower to perceive the stimuli but still had to devote a significant amount to sorting and processing them. Having invested in the processing step, they could extract and integrate information quickly, giving them a cognitive advantage. The prefrontal cortex of the human brain may have a role in tennis’s ability to anticipate plays.
References
- Hughes, P.K., Bhundell, N.L. and Waken, J.M., 1993. Visual and psychomotor performance of elite, intermediate, and novice table tennis competitors. Clinical and Experimental Optometry, 76(2), pp.51-60.
- Schaefer, S. and Scornaienchi, D., 2020. Table tennis experts outperform novices in a demanding cognitive-motor dual-task situation. Journal of motor behavior, 52(2), pp.204-213.
- Shangguan, R. and Che, Y. (2018). The Difference in Perceptual Anticipation Between Professional Tennis Athletes and Second-Grade Athletes Before Batting. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1541. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01541
- Zhao, Q., Lu, Y., Jaquess, K. J., and Zhou, C. (2018). Utilization of cues in action anticipation in table tennis players. Journal of Sports Sciences, 36(23), 2699–2705. https://doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2018.1462545