The influence of athletic experience and kinematic information on skill-relevant affordance perception.
Humans can perceive affordances both for themselves and for others, and affordance perception is a function of perceptual-motor experience involved in playing a sport. Two experiments investigated the enhanced affordance perception of athletes. In Experiment 1, basketball players and nonbasketball players provided perceptual reports for sports-relevant (maximum standing-reach and reach-with-jump heights) and non-sports-relevant (maximum sitting height) affordances for self and other. Basketball players were more accurate at perceiving maximum reach-with-jump for another person than were nonbasketball players, but were no better at perceiving maximum reach or sitting heights. Experiment 2 investigated the informational basis for this enhanced perceptual ability of basketball players by evaluating whether kinematics inform perceivers about action-scaled (e.g., force-production dependent), but not body-scaled (i.e., geometrically determined), affordances for others, and whether basketball experience enhances sensitivity to kinematic information. Only basketball players improved at perceiving an action-scaled affordance (maximum reach-with-jump), but not body-scaled affordances (maximum standing-reach and sit) with exposure to kinematic information, suggesting that action-scaled affordances may be specified by kinematic information to which athletes are already attuned by virtue of their sport experience.
Center for Cognition, Action and Perception, Department of Psychology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221, USA. weastja@mail.uc.edu
Julie A
JA
Weast
Kevin
K
Shockley
Michael A
MA
Riley
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000886:Anthropometry; D054874:Athletic Performance / Q000502:physiology* / Q000523:psychology*; D001490:Basketball; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D009048:Motor Skills / Q000502:physiology*; D057566:Self Report; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014796:Visual Perception