The Head-Fake Effect in Basketball Is Based on the Processing of Head Orientation, but Not on Gaze Direction

Abstract

The head fake in basketball has been used as a paradigmatic example to investigate the cognitive mechanisms of deceptive actions in sports. When a player looks to one side while passing the ball to the opposite side, responses of the observer are slower and more error prone than when the player looks into the pass direction. It is not known if this head-fake effect is based on the processing of the action-irrelevant gaze direction or on the head orientation, or on both. Three experiments were designed to examine the impact of these two different sources of information conflict during the processing of head fakes in basketball. In Experiment 1, the size of the head-fake effect was not reduced when the eyes of the player were covered. In Experiment 2a and 2b, the relative influence of gaze direction and head orientation was disentangled. In both experiments, the head-fake effect remained fully present when only the head orientation was changed while the eyes gazed into the pass direction, whereas (vice versa) the effect was (almost) gone when the eyes looked away while the head was oriented into the pass direction. These findings suggest that the head-fake effect in basketball is based on the automating processing of the head orientation, but not on the (otherwise socially important) gaze information.

Examining the Perceptual-Cognitive Mechanism of Deceptive Actions in Sports

“…This is interesting since the response key in this condition, which combined a head fake with an incongruent S-R mapping, does not match the side of the relevant feature (colored ball), but the side indicated by the head orientation. This result points to a special role of the head orientation (see also Weigelt et al, 2020). It was further supported by the fact that the slowest responses were observed, when the relevant stimulus feature (i.e., colored ball), and the response were on the same side, but the head was turned to the other side.…”

“…For this reason, it is especially interesting that the irrelevant directional information had an effect at all. In this regard, other individuals’ directional information (e.g., head turn) seems to be important as social cues, which provide information about other individuals’ attention (Langton & Bruce, 1999, 2000; Weigelt et al, 2020). In contrast to Kunde et al (2011), there was no S-R congruency effect on its own, which means that neither the RTs nor the ERs were influenced by the position of the relevant stimulus feature (i.e., colored ball) alone.…”

“…Accordingly, the head-fake effect is based on the automatic processing of the head orientation, which cannot be suppressed (Kunde et al, 2011). A recent study showed that it is indeed the head orientation and not the gaze direction, which is driving the effect (Weigelt et al, 2020). Moreover, the head-fake effect can be found in novices and in basketball experts (Güldenpenning et al, 2020a; Weigelt et al, 2017), after extensive practice (Güldenpenning, Schütz et al, 2020), and with simple as well as complex response modes (Alhaj Ahmad Alaboud et al, 2016).…”

Practice reduces the costs of producing head fakes in basketball

“…Passes with head fakes in basketball have been shown to increase reaction times (RT) and error rates (ER) of the defending opponents compared to passes without head fakes (Kunde et al, 2011). This headfake effect and factors which might modulate its' size have already been extensively investigated in recent years, for example, the proportion of fake trials (Alhaj Ahmad Alaboud et al, 2012; Güldenpenning et al, 2018), the role of practice with the task (Güldenpenning, Schütz, et al, 2020), the role of motor and visual training and basketball expertise (Güldenpenning et al (2022), different avoidance instructions (Güldenpenning et al, 2019), cognitive load , and some others (Güldenpenning et al, 2022;Friehs et al, 2019;Polzien et al, 2020Weigelt et al, 2020). All studies point out that the head-fake effect is robust against a number of factors, that is, it persists in all conditions and manipulations to a signi cant degree.…”

A question of (perfect) timing: A preceding head turn increases the head-fake effect in basketball

“…The impact of the head-fake effect seems to rely on the automatic processing of the head orientation of the player, which cannot be suppressed [ 6 ]. A recent study shows that the head-fake effect is based on the automatic processing of the head orientation, but not on the (otherwise socially important) gaze information [ 7 ]. In contrast to our earlier studies [e.g., 4 , 6 ], we now refer to head orientation instead of gaze direction as task-irrelevant, interfering stimulus feature.…”