Paolini Simone, Bazzini Maria Chiara, Rossini Marco, De Marco Doriana, Nuara Arturo, Presti Paolo, Scalona Emilia, Avanzini Pietro, Fabbri-Destro Maddalena
Department of Surgery and Medicine, University of Parma, Parma, Italy.
Institute of Neuroscience, National Research Council of Italy (CNR), Parma, Italy.
Front Psychol. 2023 Mar 3;14:1122236. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1122236. eCollection 2023.
In sports, understanding others' actions represents a fundamental skill that allows players to predict the outcome of teammates' and opponents' actions and counteract them properly. While it is well known that motor expertise sets better premises for predicting the result of an observed sports action, it remains untested whether this principle applies to a team where players cover different positions that imply different motor repertoires. To test this hypothesis, we selected rugby as a paradigmatic example in which only one or two players out of 22 train and perform placed kicks. We administered a placed kick outcome prediction task to three groups of participants, namely, rugby kickers, rugby non-kickers, and controls, thus spanning over different combinations of motor expertise and visual experience. Kickers outperformed both their non-kicking teammates and controls in overall prediction accuracy. We documented how the viewpoint of observation, the expertise of the observed kicker, and the position of the kick on the court influenced the prediction performance across the three groups. Finally, we revealed that within rugby players, the degree of motor expertise (but not the visual experience) causally affects accuracy, and such a result stands even after accounting for the level of visual experience. These findings extend the role of motor expertise in decoding and predicting others' behaviors to sports teammates, among which every member is equipped with a position-specific motor repertoire, advocating for new motor training procedures combining the gestures to-be-performed with those to-be-faced.
在体育运动中，理解他人的动作是一项基本技能，它能让运动员预测队友和对手动作的结果并做出恰当应对。虽然众所周知，运动专长为预测观察到的体育动作结果提供了更好的前提条件，但这一原则是否适用于一个球员担任不同位置、意味着有不同运动技能组合的团队，仍有待检验。为了验证这一假设，我们选择橄榄球作为典型例子，在22名球员中只有一两名球员训练并进行定位踢。我们对三组参与者进行了定位踢结果预测任务，即橄榄球踢球者、橄榄球非踢球者和对照组，从而涵盖了运动专长和视觉经验的不同组合。踢球者在总体预测准确性上优于他们的非踢球队友和对照组。我们记录了观察视角、被观察踢球者的专长以及球在球场上的位置如何影响这三组的预测表现。最后，我们发现，在橄榄球运动员中，运动专长程度（而非视觉经验）会因果性地影响准确性，而且即使考虑了视觉经验水平，这一结果依然成立。这些发现将运动专长在解码和预测他人行为方面的作用扩展到了体育队友身上，其中每个成员都具备特定位置的运动技能组合，倡导将待执行的手势与待应对的手势相结合的新运动训练程序。
