Effects of probability information about course distribution on anticipatory response in tennis serve

Abstract

    The purpose of this study was to examine experimentally effects of probability information about course distribution on anticipation response in tennis serve. Subjects were twelve expert and twelve novice female players. They were required to predict a direction of tennis serve on a display using probability information given by pushing a right or left button as quickly and accurately as possible. The probability information of the opponentʼs serve, ratio of right and left, consisted of six conditions; non-instruction, 8:2, 6:4, 5:5, 4:6, and 2:8. The non-instruction condition was assigned first, and the other conditions were assigned randomly. They were instructed to the subjects prior to beginning the task. The results indicated that there was a significant interaction between skill level and instruction conditions in response time and anticipation timing but not accuracy that was higher than chance level in each of both groups. For expert group, there was no significant difference between instruction conditions in response time and anticipation timing, whereas their anticipation response was fast and accurate in the all conditions. Therefore the expert group was not affected by contextual cues of probability information. For novice group, response times and anticipation timings in 8:2, 5:5 and 4:6 were significantly faster than them of control condition. Hence, it was concluded that it would be very important to predict a serve course using both of contextual cues and body language cues, and that would be especially essential to acquire and reinforce an anticipatory skill based on more beneficial body language cues.