The paddle effect in the pong task is not due to blocking ability of the observer.

When participants try to block a moving ball on a screen by means of a manually controlled paddle, their perception of the ball's speed is altered as a function of the paddle size and thus of their blocking performance. In particular, the ball appears to move slower the larger the paddle is. This paddle effect was investigated in several studies and has become a prominent example for influences of observers' ability to act on perception. Three experiments were conducted to test for this action-related explanation. The results were clear-cut. The paddle effect occurred even though a possible impact of observers' action ability on perception was experimentally eliminated. This outcome strongly suggests that the paddle effect is not due to action ability as previously assumed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).