Dissimilarity between Wrist Trajectories in Basketball Dribbling: Hypothetical Differences Not Available to the Human Eye.

Abstract

Previous research identified the stability of wrist position as a performance indicator in a static basketball dribbling task performance under different experimental conditions since professionals displayed higher stability values than amateurs. We hypothesized that the trajectories of this cyclical task may be different between amateurs and professionals under downward peripheral vision occlusion and auditory occlusion. A modified version of the Procrustes analysis was used to quantify the dissimilarity between wrist trajectories along time. Results showed that peripheral vision occlusion caused dissimilarity in amateurs' dribbling trajectories almost four times larger than professionals'; however, auditory occlusion did not affect neither amateur nor professionals' performance. There were no cumulative effects on performance when the individual was submitted to both occlusions simultaneously.