Many
team games, one on one sports or just catching lunch involve us and our
carnivorous animal friends trying to out dodge a dodger. One participant will
feint and then move in a different direction so that the opponent is deceived
and moves in the wrong direction.
So
what is involved in this “dance”? Brault et
al decided to use rugby as the definitive dodgy game and selected 14 top
professionals and 14 non-players as test bunnies (1). 8 professional players
from the French league were filmed running towards the camera and making feints
to side step the viewer. The movies were turned into virtual reality images.
Two
experiments were run with the test bunny defenders wearing virtual reality gear.
In the first the movie was stopped just prior to the actual side step so the
“defender” had to say which way the “attacker” was going to go. In the second,
the action was carried through and the defender had to move to intercept the
virtual attacker.
The
professionals were much better at blocking than the non-players. The longer the
defender could watch before they made their move improved the scores and the
experts pushed that as much as possible, but basically it came down to reading
the signs.
The
dodger artfully moves his body (there are no female players in the French national
league) to indicate the direction that he might be going. This is termed
“deceptive movement”. However, the dodger is moving fast and his center of mass
has to be under control for his intended direction. The center of mass movement
is termed the “honest movement” in the paper.
So
with practice, the defenders pick up the honest signals and see the deceptive
signals for what they are which help their dodgy decision-making. The
conclusion is that wearing distracting kit such as fluorescent boots or
shoulder flashes would distract the catcher’s eye from the body’s center of mass.
Of
course this is the trick well known to conjurors and politicians who do and say
things to distract us from what is really going on. And, in spite of our skeptical
natures, we fall for it time and again.
- http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0037494
