Visual Illusions and the Control of Ball Placement in Goal-Directed Hitting

Abstract

When hitting, kicking, or throwing balls at targets, online control in the target area is impossible. We assumed this lack of late corrections in the target area would induce an effect of a single-winged Müller-Lyer illusion on ball placement. After extensive practice in hitting balls to different landing locations, participants (N = 9) had to hit a ball to a distant target specified by the vertex of a single-winged Müller-Lyer configuration. Impact velocity was not significantly “tricked^™ by the pictorial illusion, suggesting that, even when late corrections in the target area are absent, some motor behaviors are not susceptible to the influence of the visual environment surrounding the target.

Key words:

• Aiming
• Motor control
• Perception-action
• Spatial accuracy

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Simone R. Caljouw

We thank Moniek Lijster for help in carrying out the experiment and Digby Elliott and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Please address correspondence concerning this article to Simone Caljouw, Center for Human Movement Sciences, Postbus 196, 9700 AD, Groningen, The Netherlands.