Judgements about the relation between force and trajectory variables in verbally described ballistic projectile motion

Abstract

How accurate are explicit judgements about familiar forms of object motion, and how are they made? Participants judged the relations between force exerted in kicking a soccer ball and variables that define the trajectory of the ball: launch angle, maximum height attained, and maximum distance reached. Judgements tended to conform to a simple heuristic that judged force tends to increase as maximum height and maximum distance increase, with launch angle not being influential. Support was also found for the converse prediction, that judged maximum height and distance tend to increase as the amount of force described in the kick increases. The observed judgemental tendencies did not resemble the objective relations, in which force is a function of interactions between the trajectory variables. This adds to a body of research indicating that practical knowledge based on experiences of actions on objects is not available to the processes that generate judgements in higher cognition and that such judgements are generated by simple rules that do not capture the objective interactions between the physical variables.

Judging joint angles and movement outcome: Shifting the focus of attention in dart-throwing.

“…However, there was no correlation between estimates of body position and either the horizontal or vertical location of the dart. It could be that participants were not aware of the actual joint position at dart release, or that the verbal estimations of joint angle were not sensitive enough to capture the complexity of the biomechanics of the throw (see White, 2013).…”