Visual Information Processing in Basketball Jump-Shots

Psych 428 Human Motor Skills

Spring 2007

There are many types of sports that require far aiming tasks. It is obvious that vision
plays an important role when the objective of a game is to hit a target and score as much points
as possible. In the fast pace sport of basketball, it is quite common to see a player jumping high
off the court, and rising over the defenders outreached arms to make a jump shot. Research on
basketball had increased in great numbers when the popularity of the sport skyrocketed. Much
research has been done on kinematics, biomechanics, and the physics involved in basketball.
However, there have only been a few studies that focus primarily on visual control and
information processing while aiming at a far target.
Previous research in basketball foul-shots (free throws) by Vickers (1996) supported the
fact that there was a difference in fixation time of gaze on target between non-expert players and
expert players. She defined gaze behavior as the manner in which individuals moved their heads
and eyes to take in available information while preparing and executing the free throw. She
acquired a total of sixteen elite basketball players as participants. They were split into two equal
groups; each participant was classified as an expert or near-expert based on their free-throw
shooting percentages during a recent season.
Participants were instructed to shoot free throws behind the free-throw line (15 feet from
the basket). They took consecutive free throws until they had made 10 hits and 10 misses.
Visual information (i.e. gaze) was recorded with a mobile helmet that participants wore. Vickers
found that experts fixated their gaze at a target (i.e. backboard or basket) for a longer time before
taking the actual shot than near-experts, a phenomenon called quiet eye. She explained her
results using a location-suppression hypothesis. The hypothesis stated that during the early
phases of the aiming action, a fixation of long duration was needed on a specific target location

(i.e. basket or backboard). After the aiming action was performed, vision appeared to be a
liability and was suppressed by the performer.
Many fans of basketball would argue that the ability to make a high percentage of freethrows would decide the winning team. Foul-shots or free-throws are vital to winning basketball
games since every point counts. There have been numerous basketball games in which making
foul shots had decided the winning team. Hence, some researchers were interested in training
methods for improving these shooting percentages. In efforts to study the foul-shot, Harle and
Vickers (2001) studied whether training Quiet Eye in University basketball players would
improve free throw shooting accuracy. Quiet Eye was defined as the players final fixation or
gaze behavior on the hoop or backboard prior to the shooting action. Participants were elite
female University basketball players who competed in a Canadian league. There were a total of
three teams; one team was the experimental group while the other two were the control groups.
Shooting percentages of the three teams were recorded over their regular seasons. The
experimental group participated in pre-post tests and received 6 weeks of Quiet Eye training
lessons from the researchers.
During Quiet Eye training sessions, participants received feedback of their pursuit
tracking and they were shown how to control their visual information (i.e. gaze) efficiently. An
eye tracker system recorded participants gaze, motor, and optical behavior as free throws were
performed. Although the equipment was worn as a helmet on participants head, it did not affect
the participants and their free throws. Before the Quiet Eye training began, free throw
completion percentages were compared between the three groups from a previous season, the
experimental group had the lowest percentage (54.14% compared to 67.67% and 61.34%).
However, by the end of a following season, pre to post test results showed that the experimental

team increased its free throw accuracy in an experimental setting by 11.98%. The experimental
group had improved their percentage by 22.62% (from 54.1% to 74.05%) while the control
groups percentages changed very slightly. The experimental group significantly improved in the
duration of Quiet Eye after their training. Their duration of visual fixation (Q.E.) increased from
782 ms in the pretest to 981 ms in the posttest as free throw shooting percentages increased;
indicating that fixation was sustained longer prior to successful shots.
However, long target fixations have only been reported in static self-paced task where the
positions of both performer and target are stationary (i.e. Foul shots in basketball). During a fast
pace action like jump shooting, there is often no time for long fixations and elaborate movement
programming. Therefore, in such task, the timing of visual information processing and pick-up
are important because opportunities for information pick-up are limited and the detected
information has to be used in controlling an unfolding movement (R. Ferraz de Oliveira et al.,
2006).
In order to look further into this matter, Oudejans, van de Langenberg, and Hutter (2002)
investigated vision and shooting style. Generally, there are two types of shooting styles, lowstyle and high-style shooting. The main difference was whether or not the shooter could see the
rim from underneath the ball before the ball was released. In low-style shooting, the shooters
hand and ball remain below eye level before the final extension of the elbow in order to shoot the
ball. An advantage of this shooting style would be that the final extension of the elbow could be
initiated as soon as sufficient information had been processed. A disadvantage would be that
information pick-up and processing had to occur before the final extension of the elbow because
the shooter would bring the ball up to his or her eye level, blocking his or her own vision of the
potential target. On the other hand, in high-style shooting, the ball would be first carried above

the shooters head and then followed by an extension of the elbow to shoot the ball. An
advantage of this shooting style would be that the shooter could look at the basket from
underneath the ball in the over-head position, which would allow nearly simultaneous visual
control of final shooting movement close to release of the ball. A disadvantage would be that the
time window for viewing the target becomes narrower.
Oudejans and his colleagues noted the fact that Vickers research consisted of female
shooters, and female shooters tend to have low-style shooting. Indeed, all the participants
(except for one) in Vickers experiment were low-style shooters. Hence, her results and
conclusions might have been restricted to the use of low-style only. For this reason, Oudejans
and his colleagues wanted to examine more on this matter using basketball jump shooting with
high style. They investigated jump shooting performance of 10 expert male shooters with vision
occluded either before or after ball and hands moved passed the line of sight. Each participant
was randomly tested in four viewing conditions: early vision (vision occluded during the final
350ms before ball release), late vision (vision occluded until the final 350ms), full vision, and no
vision. All participants wore a pair of liquid-crystal glasses which manipulated participants
vision. The lenses were constructed with liquid crystal cells, powered by an electrical field
applied across the two glass plates. Under command of an electronic timing circuit, the
experimenter changed the lenses from transparent (open) to translucent (closed). In the open
state, lenses would look like clear glass. In contrast, the closed state prevented participants from
perceiving visual information. Participants hand and head movements were tracked and
recorded using a three-dimensional motion measurement system. The device precisely detected
when participants hand and ball passed their line of sight. In response, it triggered the timing

mechanism on the goggles. A digital video camera was synchronized with the motion
measurement device to thoroughly track participants every move.
Participants were asked to dribble, take a step, followed by a jump stop, and then take a
jump shot at a marked spot which was approximately 5 meters away from the rim. Participants
were instructed to execute the task at their own pace. There were 5 practice trials and 25
experimental trials for each of the four conditions. Oudejans and his colleagues found that late
vision shooting condition was just as good as full vision shooting condition, while the early
vision shooting condition and no vision condition produced the worst performance. These
results supported the researchers hypothesis that for high-style shooters, late viewing is more
appropriate for the visual control of the basketball jump shot than early viewing because final
error corrections in shooting are possible in late viewing.
In effort to go more in depth with Oudejans and his colleagues findings, R. Ferraz de
Oliveira, Oudejans, and Beek (2006) studied preferred timing of visual information pick-up in
basketball jump-shooting using a similar experimental design. However, their research involved
two groups of participants, high-style and low-style shooters. Participants were twelve
experienced right-handed basketball players. Seven males had high shooting style; one male and
four females had low shooting style. Participants wore a pair of liquid-crystal glasses which
manipulated participants vision. During each shot, the glasses were open for 350 ms and closed
for 250 ms. These intervals were chosen based on previous research literature. Previous
research supported that this occlusion technique used in this study would not affect the task
performance. Shooting percentages would not be affected when compared to full vision groups
(Oudejans et al, 2002). Similar equipment (eye tracker, video cameras, etc.) mentioned in the
previous studies was used to record participants vision and motion information.

Participants were asked to make a left-hand dribble, a step, a jump stop, followed by a
jump shot from a designated area on the court floor at their own pace. They were given practice
trails to become familiar with the environment and equipment. R. Ferraz de Oliveira and
colleagues found that these jump shooters preferred to pick up visual information about the
basket as late as possible given their adopted shooting style. In low-style group, shooters saw the
basket just before the ball and hands passed their line of sight, and they picked up visual
information just before the basket was occluded by the ball and hands. In high-style group,
shooters saw the basket just before ball release, and they picked up visual information just before
ball was released. Since long fixations on the target were made impossible due to the alternation
of opening and closing the glasses, it provided R. Ferraz de Oliveira and colleagues convincing
support on their research hypothesis that late information pick-up is preferred in basketball jump
shooting. This evidence provided logical sense in view of the fact that basketball players usually
have to perform jump shots under tremendous time pressure and pressure of the defending team.
Hence, visual information would be processed as late as possible in order to give more time to
the jump shooter so that he or she could scan the environment for open teammates closer to the
basket or defenders that could possibly block the shot.
To the extent that research on basketball has gone, visual information processing in
basketball shooting has been barely touched upon in recent years. Due to vast technological
advancement, researchers are able to look more closely at the timing of visual information pickup during the act of shooting. All of the studies mentioned in this article took place in
experimental settings. Therefore, some researchers did not look at or failed to find evidence to
support their findings in real field settings such as competitions. More research is still needed to
be conducted on this matter.

References
De Oliveira R.F., Oudejans R., Beek, P. (2006). Late information pick-up is preferred in
basketball jump shooting. Journal of Sports Sciences, 9, 933-940.
Harle, S. K., & Vickers J. N. (2001). Training quiet eye improves accuracy in the
basketball free throw. The Sport Psychologist, 15, 289 305.
Oudejans R., van de Langenberg R., Hutter R. (2002). Aiming at a far target under
different viewing conditions: Visual control in basketball jump shooting. Human
Movement Science, 4, 457-480.
Vickers, J.N. (1996). Visual control when aiming at a far target. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 22, 342-354.