Wearable occlusion device for assessing cognitive basketball shooting performance between males and females

Abstract

Wearable devices enable the monitoring and assessing of healthy activity in sports. While gender differences have been shown to play a significant role in sports for a variety of areas including injuries, kinematics, and proprioception, the potential influence of gender difference on basketball shot prediction is not well understood. The goal of this study was to use wearable technology for quantifying and comparing the performance of female and male collegiate basketball players at guessing the result of their own free throws. Twenty female and male players took free throw attempts, then guessed the results as 'in' or 'out' while their vision was occluded at ball release. Males predicted made shots better than females, and females predicted missed shots better than males. Male shooters exhibited significantly higher bias than females, meaning males tended to guess a shot was good even when the result was a miss. These findings show the benefit of using a wearable device to assess bias and suggest fundamental shot prediction differences between genders and could be instructive in training and coaching basketball players of both genders.