Outcome prediction abilities of basketball players shooting free throws

Abstract

Skilled athletes, such as basketball players, seem to anticipate the outcome of their actions, likely due to well-developed internal models that enhance predictive accuracy. This study explores whether experienced basketball players can verbally predict their free throw outcomes above chance, examining the role of expertise and potential biases in prediction accuracy. Therefore, 19 experienced basketball players performed 500 free throws in a laboratory setting. Within 2.5 seconds of visual and acoustic occlusion after ball release, they had to predict the result of every second trial as either a hit or a miss. Individual prediction accuracies above chance were calculated, and the hit bias was quantified by a signal detection theory measure (criterion c). Speech characteristics (latency and amplitude) were used as an additional proxy to investigate the prediction process. It was hypothesized that experienced players would make faster predictions of successful shots and would articulate these with greater volume compared to unsuccessful ones, reflecting the processing of available information about their throw execution and heightened response bias toward success. Results showed that participants were able to significantly predict their free throw outcomes above chance level. An earlier described hit bias could be replicated and was further observed as a louder and faster articulation of hits than misses. Overall, natural motor experts, in this case basketball players, seem to access their internal models and use the gathered information to predict the outcome of their free throws. However, they show a bias to predict hits, which is also manifested in the speech characteristics of latency and amplitude.