Action induction through the visual perception of movement in sport

In sporting situations, we visually perceive a variety of movement information. This information consists of spatial features such as positions and running paths of teammates and opponents in sports games, trajectories of balls, attacking and defensive actions of the opponent in martial arts, etc.. This visually perceived movement information is integrated into one's own action planning. The integration into one's own action control can take place completely automatically, i.e. unconsciously. This is particularly relevant when quick reactions to changing environmental situations are required, as is often the case in sport. The influence of visually perceived movement characteristics on the observer's action control is the subject of this research project. Previous findings have been limited to linear movements (from right to left and vice versa) and very simple stimulus environments (movements of simple geometric elements, point clouds, light point runners, etc.) (e.g. Bosbach, 2004, Wittfoth et al., 2006). Here, these findings are extended by other types of movement (rotational movements and depth movements) as well as simple (movements of a circle/sphere) and complex stimulus environments (real movements of an athlete). For this purpose, reaction time experiments were developed using the Simon paradigm. The results show that intended spatially compatible actions (right or left or proximal or distal key press) are induced by the visual perception of rotational movements as well as of depth movements, which is reflected in shorter reaction times. The complexity of the stimulus event does not play a role here. Further studies are planned to examine the relevance of automatically induced action tendencies for action situations in sport.