Abstract
Visual perception is one of the most important factors in sports, because sensory–motor coordination is a major competence of sports athletes. Some researchers have found that when sports players are confident, they perceive the ball as bigger and perform better. But what about the opposite way? If sports players perceive the ball as bigger, does that illusion increase their confidence, resulting in better performance? In the current study, we explore whether the perceived size of a golf ball affects golf shots. To manipulate the perceived size of the golf ball, we employed golf balls with three types of patterns: a regular golf ball, a soccer ball pattern, and a baseball pattern(Supp. Fig. 1). In Experiment 1, we measured the perceived size of each patterned golf ball. The results showed that the soccer-patterned and baseball-patterned balls were perceived as bigger than the regular balls. In Experiment 2, we examined the effects of the illusion induced by the patterns on the golf balls on actual golf shots. We measured the driving distance and accuracy after participants hit each patterned ball. Although there was no significant difference in driving distance, we found a significant difference in accuracy: participants were more accurate with patterned balls than with a regular ball. These results imply that the illusion induced by the golf ball patterns affects the actual golf shot, suggesting that visual perception can be a useful tool for improving sports performance or developing effective training methods.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2018