Contextual cue utilization in visual anticipation in tennis: On the role of an opponent’s on-court position and skill

Abstract

In batting and racket sports, players rely on kinematic and contextual cues to anticipate an opponent’s action outcome. In tennis, an opponent’s on-court position has been found to be a contextual cue signaling stroke direction. Additionally, given the varying technical–tactical repertoire associated with an opponent’s skill, the latter may further influence prediction behavior. Here, we sought to replicate position dependency in visual anticipation and to test the hypothesized interaction between an opponent’s on-court position and skill upon stroke direction anticipation in tennis. To this end, skilled tennis players predicted shot direction of point-light animated forehand groundstrokes that were executed at different on-court positions and occluded at three different time points. In block 1, no skill information was given, whereas in blocks 2 and 3 participants were told to either face opponents from the Bundesliga or Kreisliga. In line with former evidence, shot outcome predictions varied as a function of an opponent’s on-court position. Also, participants’ reliance on position information was strongest when little kinematic information was available. However, knowledge of an opponent’s purported skill was not found to reliably affect prediction behavior. By contrast, post-experiment questionnaire data suggest that players explicitly assign different shot direction probabilities depending on an opponent’s skill and position. Collectively, our research supports especially the role of on-court position for tennis stroke outcome anticipation. The conflicting findings on the potential role of knowledge of an opponent’s skill call for further empirical verification.