Anticipation skill and susceptibility to deceptive movement

The ability to detect deceptive movement was examined in skilled and novice rugby players. Participants (14 per group) attempted to predict direction change from video of expert and recreational rugby players changing direction with and without deceptive movement. Confidence associated with judgments was recorded on each trial to seek evidence regarding use of inferential (heuristic-based) and direct-perceptual (invariant-based) judgments. Novices were found to be susceptible to deceptive movement whereas skilled participants were not; however, both skilled and novice participants were more confident on trials containing deceptive movement. The data suggest that the skill-level difference in sensitivity to advance visual information extends to deceptive information. The implications of this finding, and the importance of considering the underlying process of anticipation skill, are discussed.