The Effect of Disguise on Novice and Expert Tennis Players' Anticipation Ability

Skilled performers interpret cues in the preparatory movements of their opponents to anticipate future events in many sports. Little work has tested whether these cues can be disguised. Using a temporal occlusion paradigm, this paper examines the effect of disguise on an Australian sample of expert (16 male, 2 female, age M = 24.67, SD = 9.47 years) and novice players' (24 male, 38 female, age M = 22.26, SD = 5.24 years) anticipation of tennis ground strokes. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that expert anticipation was more accurate than novice overall (p .001), and disguise reduced accuracy (p = .001). The disguise effect differed by expertise across occlusion points (p = .027). The experts' anticipatory advantage was removed by disguise at 40 ms before contact. Novice performance was significantly below chance for disguise shots occluded at contact. These results indicate that disguise is an important topic for research and practice.