Dynamics of motor control in basketball free-throw
Jorge Ibáñez-Gijón (jorge.ibanez-gijon@univ-amu.fr)
Laboratory «Comportements Perceptivo-Moteurs» (UMR CNRS 7287)
Institut des Sciences du Mouvement, Aix-Marseille Université. France
Mart Buekers (martinus.buekers@kuleuven.be)
Laboratory «Movement Control & Neuroplasticity», Department of Kinesiology,
Faculty of Kinesiology and Rehabilitation Sciences, KU Leuven.
Remy Casanova (remy.casanova@univ-amu.fr)
Laboratory «Comportements Perceptivo-Moteurs» (UMR CNRS 7287)
Institut des Sciences du Mouvement, Aix-Marseille Université. France
Marvin Dufrenne (marvin.dufrenne@univ-amu.fr)
Laboratory «Performance Motrice et Modélisation» (UMR CNRS 7287)
Institut des Sciences du Mouvement, Aix-Marseille Université. France
Antoine Morice (antoine.morice@univ-amu.fr)
Laboratory «Comportements Perceptivo-Moteurs» (UMR CNRS 7287)
Institut des Sciences du Mouvement, Aix-Marseille Université. France
Guillaume Rao (guillaume.rao@univ-amu.fr)
Laboratory «Performance Motrice et Modélisation» (UMR CNRS 7287)
Institut des Sciences du Mouvement, Aix-Marseille Université. France
Gilles Montagne (gilles.montagne@univ-amu.fr)
Laboratory «Comportements Perceptivo-Moteurs» (UMR CNRS 7287)
Institut des Sciences du Mouvement, Aix-Marseille Université. France
Expertise in sport remains largely as an open scientific
question. It has been argued that interdisciplinary and
situated approaches are key elements to address this quest
(Phillips, Davids, Renshaw, & Portus 2010; Buekers et al.,
submitted). In this talk we present a wide perspective of a
decisive sport skill: basketball shooting. It is an example of
long distance precision throwing tasks, that are typically
performed at less than maximal speed and that require very
little physical effort. These relaxed bioenergetical
constraints leave lots of redundancy in the available space of
successful actions. This redundancy can accommodate
multiple additional constraints to the control of movements,
as demonstrated by the great diversity of successful
shooting styles. As a consequence, basketball shooting
constitutes an appropriate task to study the multiple factors
that affect dexterity and that shape expert performance in
sport.
Previous research in basketball shooting essentially focused
on defining the informational requirements of jump shots
and free throws. This line of research led to the initial
recognition by Vickers (1996) of a “quiet eye effect” in lowstyle free-throw shooters, interpreted as the pre-
configuration of the motor program. Later studies found that
despite the common use of a period of preparation before
the shot, on-line visual information was also used to control
the unfolding of the movement (De Oliveira, Oudejans, &
Beek, 2006; De Oliveira, Huys, Oudejans, van de
Langenberg, & Beek, 2007). Even though this type of
information-based control mechanism appears to be more
salient for jump shots, it is nevertheless present in all
inspected shot types and styles (De Oliveira, Oudejans, &
Beek, 2008). Despite the interest elicited by the perceptual
control of movements in this task, there is very little direct
evidence of the motor changes that go together with
different availabilities of visual information during the shot.
Here, we present some preliminary results of an ongoing
research project that aims to shed light on how perception
and movement control are brought together in basketball
shooting. During this first experiment we examined how
visual conditions (i.e., full vision vs. occlusion of the last
part of the shot) influenced the basketball free throws
produced by both experts and novices. More precisely, we
analyzed the behavioral consequences of these perceptual
manipulations through a close inspection of kinetic,
kinematic, and electromyographic variables. We then
developed a 3D kinematic model of the shooter that allows
us to analyze the dynamical stability under the different
experimental conditions with respect to different task
relevant variables using the uncontrolled manifold (UCM)
methodology (Scholz & Schöner, 1999).
Acknowledgments
This work has been carried out thanks to the support of the
A*MIDEX project (n° ANR-11-IDEX-0001-02) funded by
the «Investissements d’Avenir» French Government
program, managed by the French National Research Agency
(ANR)
References
Buekers, M., Ibáñez-Gijón, J., Morice, A., Rao, G., Mascret,
N., Laurin, J., & Montagne, G. (submitted).
Interdisciplinary research and expertise in sports: from
theoretical insights to experimental practice. International
Journal of Sport Psychology.
De Oliveira, R. F., Oudejans, R. R., & Beek, P. J. (2006).
Late information pick-up is preferred in basketball jump
shooting. Journal of Sports Sciences, 24(9), 933-940.
De Oliveira, R., Huys, R., Oudejans, R. R. D., van de
Langenberg, R., & Beek, P. J. (2007). Basketball jump
shooting is controlled online by vision. Experimental
Psychology, 54(3), 180.
De Oliveira, R. F., Oudejans, R. R., & Beek, P. J. (2008).
Gaze behavior in basketball shooting: Further evidence
for online visual control. Research quarterly for exercise
and sport, 79(3), 399-404.
Phillips, E., Davids, K., Renshaw, I., & Portus, M. (2010).
Expert performance in sport and the dynamics of talent
development. Current Opinion, 40, 271-283.
Scholz, J. P., & Schöner, G. (1999). The uncontrolled
manifold concept: identifying control variables for a
functional task. Experimental brain research, 126(3),
289-306.
Vickers, J. N. (1996). Visual control when aiming at a far
target. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human
Perception and Performance, 22(2), 342.