Learning Anticipation Skill with Kinematic and Contextual Information

Objectives: Elite athletes use advanced memory structures to recognize patterns, assess situational probabilities, and interpret cues from player movements to anticipate events (Williams et al., 1999). However, the processes involved in utilizing multiple sources of information for anticipation are not well understood (Broadbent et al., 2015; Gredin et al., 2020). Therefore, this study aims to investigate the acquisition of anticipation skills in the presence of kinematic and outcome probabilities information and to determine whether this learning exhibits characteristics of Bayesian integration.
Methods: Participants with no prior experience in competitive tennis watched tennis players hitting forehand shots and were asked to predict the outcome of the shot. Accuracy, response times and perceived task effort were recorded before, during and after four acquisition blocks where outcome feedback was provided. In both Experiment 1 and 2, the training group stimuli either included or excluded kinematic information about shot direction. In Experiment 1, the probability of left/right shots remained equal for both groups. In Experiment 2, both groups were trained with a bias in the shot outcome probability towards one shot direction on 80% of the trials across acquisition blocks (without being informed about this manipulation).
Results: The results showed that anticipation performance improved from pre-to post in the presence of kinematic information (EXP1) or both information sources (EXP2). Additionally, pre-to-post improvements in the presence of shot outcome probability information were consistent with the trained bias in the shot direction (EXP2). Superior anticipation performance was observed when both sources of information were present. The inclusion of kinematic information led to an increase in perceived effort during early training (EXP1 & 2). Bayesian odds ratios indicated that shot direction probabilities and kinematic information were integrated during the learning of anticipation skills.
Conclusion: Learning with shot direction probabilities and kinematic information exhibits characteristics of Bayesian integration.