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Cited by 73Sport Psychology and PerformanceVisual perception and processing mechanismsMotor Control and Adaptation

Get Me Out of This Slump! Visual Illusions Improve Sports Performance

Witt, Jessica K., Linkenauger, Sally A., Proffitt, Dennis R.·2012·Psychological Science
DOI 10.1177/0956797611428810
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Abstract

One of the reasons we (the authors) enjoy going to live college basketball games is to watch the antics of the student section. We love watching the students’ creativity in trying to pump up the home team and distract the visiting team, especially during free throws. Such escapades made us question whether manipulating what athletes see can influence their subsequent performance. Perception is clearly important for performance. For instance, when athletes look directly at a target without moving their eyes around—a pattern known as the quiet eye—they are more successful in making free throws, putting, and performing a variety of other tasks (e.g., Vickers, 1996, 2007). The quiet eye might lead to more successful performance by focusing attention on targets, and helping athletes to ignore distractors. Additionally, the quiet eye might change the way targets look. Targets presented in the fovea look bigger than those in the periphery (Newsome, 1972), so the quiet eye might lead athletes to perceive targets as bigger. Misperceiving a target as bigger could influence performance in one of three ways. It could disrupt performance because the observer might aim for a location that does not correspond with the target. In this case, the misperception would result in worse performance. However, actions and explicit perceptions may not be influenced by illusions to the same degree (Goodale Milner, 1992). That is, there may be dissociations between perceptions and visually guided actions such that illusions, which fool conscious perception, do not influence subsequent actions (e.g., Ganel, Tanzer, Goodale, 2008). In this case, misperceiving a target as bigger would not affect performance. A final alternative is that misperceiving a target as bigger could enhance performance. Bigger targets feel as if they should be easier to hit, so people may feel more confident when aiming for a bigger target. Given that increased confidence improves performance (e.g., Woodman Hardy, 2003), a perceptually bigger target may also lead to enhanced performance. Here, we report an experiment in which we tested these possibilities.

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  • When a golf hole appeared larger, participants made more successful putts than when it appeared smaller.

    “As demonstrated by Witt, Linkenauger, and Proffitt (2012), when the golf hole appeared larger because it was surrounded by small circles, participants produced more successful putts than when the hole was surrounded by larger circles and therefore appeared smaller (Ebbinghaus illusion).”

    From Optimizing performance through intrinsic motivation and attention for learning: The OPTIMAL theory of motor learning (2016) · cites this paper as Witt, Linkenauger, and Proffitt (2012)

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Authors
Witt, J. K., Linkenauger, S. A., & Proffitt, D. R.
Affiliations
  • Purdue University West Lafayette (US)
  • Max Planck Society (DE)
  • Department of Psychology, University of Virginia
ORCID
Venue
Psychological Science
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2012-03-05
Volume
23
Issue
4
Pages
397-399
ISSN
  • 0956-7976 (ISSN-L)
  • 1467-9280
DOI
10.1177/0956797611428810
OpenAlex
W2010745040
Cited by
73
References
15
Citations by year
2025: 2 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 4 · 2014: 7 · 2013: 5 · 2012: 3
FWCI
12.24
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)
Locations
  • Psychological Science (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Lancaster EPrints (Lancaster University) (submittedVersion)
  • Max Planck Digital Library (submittedVersion)
  • MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion)
Funders
National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH075781)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Sport Psychology and Performance
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Motor Control and Adaptation
Keywords
optical illusions, quiet eye, free throw performance, basketball, visual attention, confidence, athletic performance
MeSH terms
Female, Humans, Illusions, Male, Athletic Performance

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