Examining the Perceptual-Cognitive Mechanism of Deceptive Actions in Sports

In several kinds of sports, deceptive actions are used to hinder the anticipation performance of an opponent. During a head fake in basketball, a player turns the head to one side but passes the ball to the other side. A pass with a head fake generates a head-fake effect in the observer, which is characterized by slower and more error-prone responses to the pass direction as compared to passes without a head fake. Whereas the head-fake effect has been replicated several times, the question of its origin with dynamic stimuli has not been answered yet. The present study includes four experiments, which are conducted to examine the perceptual-cognitive mechanism underlying the effect by using the model of dimensional overlap (Kornblum et al., 1990) and the additive factors logic (Sternberg, 1969). Results point to multiple processes contributing to the head-fake effect for dynamic stimuli, which operate not only at a perceptual level but also at a level of response selection.