Denul Ayala, Pourtois Gilles, Loeys Tom, Notebaert Wim
Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
Department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
Sci Rep. 2025 May 23;15(1):17919. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-02006-x.
Error monitoring, a crucial aspect of behavioral regulation, has been studied extensively in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Lab studies often observe that people become more cautious after both own and others' errors. Moreover, social error monitoring research suggests that cooperation elicits stronger adaptations to others' errors than competition. However, these insights primarily stem from controlled reaction time tasks, limiting generalization to real-world social settings. To address this, we investigated whether basketball players become more cautious after missing compared to making shots, and whether these adaptations differ when the miss was by themselves, teammates or opponents. Meta-analyses of four NBA-seasons revealed increased caution in terms of shot distance and angle following missed compared to made shots, with the most pronounced effect after own, next teammates' and last opponents' errors. While controlling for rebound shots reduced the effects, the general pattern remained. Additional analyses also revealed a positive correlation between post-error caution and accuracy, suggesting post-error caution may serve to improve shooting accuracy. These findings not only extend cognitive theories from controlled settings to a real-word sport setting, but also provide a crucial understanding of athletes' social error responses thereby paving the way for research aimed at optimizing this aspect of performance.
错误监测作为行为调节的一个关键方面，在认知心理学和神经科学领域已得到广泛研究。实验室研究经常观察到，人们在自己和他人犯错后都会变得更加谨慎。此外，社会错误监测研究表明，与竞争相比，合作会引发对他人错误更强烈的适应性反应。然而，这些见解主要源于受控的反应时间任务，限制了其对现实世界社会环境的推广。为解决这一问题，我们研究了篮球运动员投篮未中后是否比命中后变得更加谨慎，以及当未中是由自己、队友还是对手造成时，这些适应性反应是否存在差异。对四个NBA赛季的荟萃分析显示，与命中投篮相比，投篮未中后在投篮距离和角度方面的谨慎程度有所增加，自己犯错后的影响最为明显，其次是队友犯错，最后是对手犯错。虽然控制补篮会降低这种影响，但总体模式仍然存在。进一步分析还揭示了错误后谨慎程度与准确性之间的正相关关系，表明错误后谨慎可能有助于提高投篮准确性。这些发现不仅将认知理论从受控环境扩展到了现实世界的运动环境，还为理解运动员对社会错误的反应提供了关键依据，从而为旨在优化这一表现方面的研究铺平了道路。
