Tennis players need to learn perceptual skills in watching the hitting motion executed by opponent. In skilled perception, visual information of skinning (i.e. body shape and color shading) should have strong effect. This study was aimed to investigate the perceptual effect of the visual information with skinning in tennis serve. Fourteen collegiate tennis players watched the tennis serve motion developed with computer graphic animations of three models (skin, shadow, stick), which were modulated at a certain joint of the racket arm, and required to answer the joint modulated. Results showed the skin model tended to be less correctly answered. As tennis serve motion, which is usually considered as a rapid motion, it is suggested that abstracted motion, e.g. stick model, give effective information for perception.
