Visual perception in basketball shooting

The general aim of the research presented in the present thesis was to elucidate the visual basis of basketball shooting. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the pertinent literature. Previous studies on the topic focused on temporal aspects of vision and identified the rapidity of orienting as necessary ingredients for successful performance and distinguishing marks of expertise. In apparent contrast to the long target fixations, a more recent study highlighted the benefits of looking at the target late (Oudejans, van de Langenberg, & Hutter, 2002). To help resolve this issue we examined the preferred timing of optical information pickup in Chapter 2, the effects of online and offline visual control in Chapter 3, and the gaze behaviour during the preparation and execution of the shooting movements in Chapter 4. In addition to the temporal aspects of vision, we investigated the information sources that are used to guide basketball shooting in three experiments, which are reported in Chapter 5. The contents of these chapters may be summarized in greater detail as follows. In Chapter 2 we investigated the preferred timing of optical information pickup and how this depended on the shooting style used. Our hypothesis was that expert basketball players prefer to look at the target as late as permitted by their shooting style. The employed shooting style determines whether or not a player can see the basket following the moment when ball and hands pass the line of sight (mLoS). Players with a low shooting style can only see the basket before mLoS, whereas players with a high shooting style can see the basket after mLoS until ball release. To investigate when players with either type of shooting style prefer to view the basket, we used an intermittent viewing technique and a 3D movement registration system. We used liquid crystal glasses that intermittently turned transparent and opaque (for 350 and 250 ms, respectively). The 3D movement registration system Optotrak was used to determine mLoS.