The Effect of Focus of Attention in Mental Imagery on Kinematics of Basketball Free Throw

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of focus of attention in mental imagery on kinematics of basketball free throw. Twenty female students (21 ±1.2 years old, without experience in basketball) were randomly selected from the students of Shahid Beheshti University and randomly divided into two distant focusing imagery groups. The task was 20 free basketball shoots, which were performed in two conditions of imagery: the imagery of far external attention (attention to the ring) and the imagery of near external attention (attention to the ball’s path). The wrist kinematic data was also recorded by six motion analyzer cameras (OSPREY manufacturing USA motion Analysis Company and data analyses with cortex 2.6 version software).The results of analysis of variance revealed that there was no difference between the two groups of far and near external attention imagery in the kinematic variables of displacement range of the wrist joint (P =0/386). However, the displacement range of the wrist joint in the posttest between two groups was significantly higher than the pretest condition (P =0/072). The results of this study are based on Wulf’s constrained action hypothesis, which states that attention to external signs associated with motion can be useful for performance. The effect of the optimal distance in the focus of attention and the degrees of freedom theory of Bernstein, support the idea that the release of degrees of freedom for beginners may help to perform the exercise more efficiently.