The effect of expertise on encoding of movements and bodily indexes: a study on volleyball players

The use of a particular attentional paradigm, the paradigm of Sidedness (Ottoboni, Tessari, Cubelli & Umiltà, 2005) has highlighted as professional volleyball players differ from nonplayers in the ability to encode specific spatial indexes. The presentation of images of hands of potential adversaries incorporates meanings related to sport that make volleyball athletes sensitive to directional spatial characteristics previously unobserved. What appears to be crucial in the generation of such effect is the ability to predict the direction of an action.