Investigating the similarity of action representation in real performance and observing basketball free throw in skilled and beginners: kinematic and eye movement pattern study

The aim of the present study was to investigate the action representation in real performance and observing the basketball free throw in skilled and beginners. In this study, the kinematic parameters of movement during real performance and the eye movements pattern in both real and observation modes were studied. Twenty participants including 10 skilled basketball players and 10 beginners, participated in the study. The research design was conducted in two sessions. In the first session, the subjects performed 10 free throws and their movements were recorded by the motion analysis system, their eye movements were recorded by the pupil-based binocular eye trackers device, and the total movement were recorded for the next display by the camera placed on the head and the external camera. In the second session, after installing the eye tracker system, the individuals watched their performance from a first-person and third-person perspective, and eye movements were recorded. After recording the data, the values of throw accuracy, intra-limb coordination variability, wrist speed at the moment of throw, wrist jerk, quite eye duration, fixation time, and number of fixations were analyzed using independent t-test and two-way ANOVA with repeated measures (2 × 3) and Bonferroni post hoc test. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS 21 software and a significance level of p≤0.05 was considered. The results showed that the coordination variability was less in skilled basketball players and the eye movement pattern is not only different in skilled and beginners but also in terms of actual performance and observation.