Browsing by Subject "perception and action"

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    Perceiving affordances for receiving a serve in virtual volleyball
    (2024-04) Arruda, Danilo
    Affordances are opportunities for action that are available for a given person in a given environment. When receiving serves in volleyball, players commonly use one of two techniques; overhead (hands pronated above the head) or underhand (hands supinated near the waist). The relative utility of those techniques is influenced by characteristics of each serve, including its height. At the same time, the importance of serve height varies with the height of the player. This relationship suggests that it might be possible (and useful) to consider serve reception in volleyball in the context of affordances. Using a head-mounted virtual reality system, I varied the height of incoming serves, ranging from 1 m to 2.25 m. Participants responded to each serve by attempting to intercept it using either the overhead or underhand technique. I predicted that participants (skilled volleyball players) would use the overhead technique for higher serves and the underhand technique for lower serves, and that there would be discrete transition between the two techniques, consistent with the hypothesis that players perceive incoming serves in terms of whether they afford one or the other technique. I varied the height of participants by utilizing players from men’s and women’s volleyball teams. I separately analyzed the choice of serve reception techniques in terms of serve height expressed extrinsically (i.e., in meters) and expressed intrinsically (i.e., in relation to each participant’s maximum vertical reach). These separate analyses made it possible for me to identify possible sex differences in serve reception that were related to sex differences in height, as well as differences in serve reception technique that were not related to sex differences in height. I also analyzed data about displacement of the VR headset and used those data as a measure of whole-body movement as participants prepared to receive each serve. As predicted, I found discrete transitions between techniques, in relation to serve height. Separately, I found evidence for sex differences in serve reception that were related to sex differences in height, but also others that were not related to sex differences in height. Finally, I found systematic relationships between serve height, patterns of whole-body anticipatory movement, and use of the overhead and underhand techniques. I interpreted those relationships as evidence for the perception of higher order affordances for the use of anticipatory whole-body movement to optimize the utility of particular serve reception techniques. I concluded 1) that incoming serves in volleyball can be perceived in terms of their affordances, 2) that head-mounted virtual reality is a useful method for the study of affordance perception in time-constrained domains, such as volleyball, 3) that sex differences in volleyball arise from anthropometric sex differences but also from sex differences that are not related to anthropometrics, and 4) that skilled volleyball players can perceive incoming serves in terms of higher order affordances in which anticipatory movements are relative to techniques for serve reception.