@article{64859, abstract = {{This study investigated whether external effort mobilization through try-harder instructions enhances performance in complex motor tasks, as reflected by the reduction of costs associated with producing a deceptive action. Basketball passing movements with and without head fakes were examined in a reaction-time paradigm. Participants were generally instructed to initiate the movement as fast and accurately as possible, while try-harder instructions were presented in 25 % of trials, prompting participants to mobilize all their cognitive resources to perform even faster. To investigate if athletic expertise modulates the potential effects of effort mobilization, basketball novices and experienced players were tested. Results demonstrated that try-harder instructions generally improved participants’ performance, facilitating faster response initiation times and movement execution, as well as a specific reduction in initiation time variability. Novices benefited more than experienced players, indicating that effort results in greater improvement when complex motor actions (for example, passes with head fakes) are not yet fully stabilized and lack automated fluency. This pattern suggests that effort enhances performance in complex actions when performance is limited by the amount of cognitive capacity available, supporting the coordination of partly conflicting movement components within tight temporal constraints. The findings extend previous research on effort mobilization from simple to complex motor tasks. Try-harder instructions appear to enhance performance primarily by reducing attentional lapses rather than generally improving processing speed. Future research should investigate the effectiveness of effort mobilization in experienced athletes in situations of high concurrent cognitive load.}}, author = {{Böer, Nils Tobias and Steinborn, Michael B. and Weigelt, Matthias and Güldenpenning, Iris}}, issn = {{1469-0292}}, journal = {{Psychology of Sport and Exercise}}, keywords = {{Effort, Try-harder instruction, Deception, Basketball, Head fake, Fake production}}, publisher = {{Elsevier BV}}, title = {{{Mobilizing effort in complex motor tasks: Try-harder instructions in deceptive actions}}}, doi = {{10.1016/j.psychsport.2026.103083}}, volume = {{84}}, year = {{2026}}, } @inproceedings{65524, author = {{Margraf, Linda and Krause, Daniel and Maurer, Lisa Katharina and Weigelt, Matthias}}, location = {{Kobe, Japan}}, pages = {{224--225}}, title = {{{Effects of feedback delay duration on neural processing of valence-dependent augmented feedback during motor practice}}}, year = {{2026}}, } @inproceedings{66739, author = {{Güldenpenning, Iris and Schulze Frielinghaus, Lars and Böer, Nils Tobias and Schmidt, Thomas and Weigelt, Matthias}}, booktitle = {{18th FEPSAC European Congress of Sport Psychology: Performance, Health and Enhancement in Action}}, location = {{Timisoara}}, title = {{{Early postural dynamics reveal the rapid processing of fake social cues for deceptive actions in sports}}}, year = {{2026}}, } @inproceedings{66742, author = {{Böer, Nils Tobias and Steinborn, Michael B. and Weigelt, Matthias and Güldenpenning, Iris}}, booktitle = {{18th FEPSAC European Congress of Sport Psychology: Performance, Health and Enhancement in Action}}, location = {{Timisoara (Rumänien)}}, title = {{{Mobilizing Effort in Complex Motor Tasks: Try-Harder Instructions in Deceptive Actions}}}, year = {{2026}}, } @article{66689, abstract = {{Abstract Deceptive actions such as head fakes are a hallmark of interactive sports, yet it is not well understood how decisions and whole-body responses to head fakes unfold over time. In the present study, participants viewed video sequences of a basketball player passing to the left or right, either with or without a head fake. In the buzzer task, participants moved laterally to press a response button as if to intercept the pass. In the vocal task, they verbally indicated pass direction. Reaction times (RTs), movement times (MTs), and medio-lateral center-of-pressure (CoP) displacements were recorded to investigate whether motor output is rapid and stimulus-driven or rather requires continuous integration of fake and pass cues. Further, we investigated whether the mere observation of a basketball player leads to overt micromovements even if no response movement is intended. The data analysis shows that head fakes increased RTs in both the buzzer and vocal tasks. In the buzzer task, head fakes induced an initial, small erroneous CoP shift, which was then rapidly corrected. When CoP trajectories were aligned by head orientation, fake and non-fake trajectories diverged shortly after movement onset. In the present dynamic sport-related context, this pattern is more compatible with the early integration of head and pass information than with a strictly sequential prime-target account, although the paradigm differs from classic Rapid Chase Theory designs with discrete primes and target events. In the vocal task, participants were not instructed to move, yet CoP traces showed tiny but systematically lateralized micromovements with a temporal structure resembling that in the buzzer task, albeit without an initial erroneous shift for head fakes. These postural fluctuations are consistent with action-observation-related motor activation, although they do not uniquely identify motor resonance and may also reflect attentional or generalized embodied response tendencies. A clear deceptive response conflict at the postural level emerged only when a lateralized action was prepared.}}, author = {{Güldenpenning, Iris and Schulze Frielinghaus, Lars and Böer, Nils Tobias and Schmidt, Thomas and Weigelt, Matthias}}, issn = {{2045-2322}}, journal = {{Scientific Reports}}, number = {{1}}, publisher = {{Springer Science and Business Media LLC}}, title = {{{Early postural dynamics reveal the rapid processing of fake social cues for deceptive actions in sports}}}, doi = {{10.1038/s41598-026-61922-8}}, volume = {{16}}, year = {{2026}}, } @inproceedings{65257, author = {{Böer, Nils Tobias and Steinborn, Michael B. and Weigelt, Matthias and Güldenpenning, Iris}}, booktitle = {{Abstracts of the 68th Conference of Experimental Psychologists}}, editor = {{Kaup, Barbara and Roth, Lilly and Rück, Franziska}}, keywords = {{effort, try-harder instruction, deception, sport psychology, action and perception}}, location = {{Tübingen}}, title = {{{When Trying Harder Helps: Effort Instructions Affect Performance in Complex Motor Tasks}}}, year = {{2026}}, } @inproceedings{66733, author = {{Güldenpenning, Iris and Schulze Frielinghaus, Lars and Böer, Nils Tobias and Weigelt, Matthias}}, booktitle = {{Abstracts of the 68th Conference of Experimental Psychologists}}, editor = {{Barbara, Kaup and Lilly, Roth and Franziska, Rück}}, location = {{Tübingen}}, title = {{{From interference to priming? Reinterpreting the head-fake effect in basketball through continuous measurements}}}, year = {{2026}}, } @inproceedings{66738, author = {{Wickemeyer, Carolin and Weigelt, Matthias and Güldenpenning, Iris}}, booktitle = {{Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology}}, location = {{Montreal}}, number = {{1}}, pages = {{3--4}}, publisher = {{Human Kinetics Journal}}, title = {{{Strategic adaptations to deceptive actions in sports: The anticipation-response-inhibition-accuracy trade-off}}}, volume = {{84}}, year = {{2026}}, } @inproceedings{66735, author = {{Wickemeyer, Carolin and Güldenpenning, Iris and Meyer, Johannes and Klatt, Stefanie and Weigelt, Matthias}}, booktitle = {{Abstracts of the 68th Conference of Experimental Psychologists}}, editor = {{Kaup, Barbara and Roth, Lilly and Rück, Franziska}}, location = {{Tübingen}}, title = {{{The role of domain-specific expertise on response inhibition in the basketball-specific ARI-task}}}, year = {{2026}}, } @inproceedings{66736, author = {{Güldenpenning, Iris and Schulze Frielinghaus, Lars and Böer, Nils Tobias and Weigelt, Matthias}}, booktitle = {{Abstracts of the 58th Annual Conference of the German Association of Sport Psychology}}, location = {{Heidelberg}}, title = {{{Rapid chase or continuous flow of information? Visual-motor processing of head fakes in basketball}}}, year = {{2026}}, } @inproceedings{66737, author = {{Wickemeyer, Carolin and Güldenpenning, Iris and Meyer, Johannes and Klatt, Stefanie and Weigelt, Matthias}}, booktitle = {{Abstracts of the 58th Annual Conference of the German Association of Sport Psychology}}, location = {{Heidelberg}}, title = {{{The role of domain-specific expertise on response inhibition in the basketball-specific ARI-task}}}, year = {{2026}}, } @inproceedings{61884, author = {{Güldenpenning, Iris and Schulze Freilinghaus, Lars and Böer, Nils Tobias and Weigelt, Matthias}}, booktitle = {{57. Herbsttagung experimentelle Kognitionspsychologie (HexKop)}}, editor = {{Geißler, Christoph F. and Schöpper, Lars-Michael}}, location = {{Trier}}, title = {{{Unraveling the head-fake effect: Dynamic measures of cognitive conflict in sport contexts}}}, year = {{2025}}, } @article{62111, abstract = {{Abstract The execution of incompatible actions imposes costs on action planning, commonly known as response-response incompatibility-costs. This phenomenon is also evident in sports: A basketball player who performs a pass in one direction whilst orienting the head into the contrary direction (pass with head fake) needs more time to initiate the action as if pass direction and head orientation are the same (pass without head fake). The aim of this study was twofold: First, we present a re-analysis of the data from Böer et al. (Psychological Research 88:523–524, 2024) using mixture effect modelling (Miller, Behavior Research Methods 38:92–106, 2006) explore if fake-production costs manifest continuously (uniform effect) in all participants or if some participants show fake-production costs occasionally but substantially (mixed effect). Second, we collected data of a control group which was analysed with the previous data of the practice group and fitted initiation times (ITs) to an ex-Gaussian distribution. The analysis of mixture effects revealed that most participants exhibited a uniform effect when they didn’t have time to mentally prepare the movement. This pattern was not changed by practice, suggesting fake-production costs can’t be overcome by practice alone without mental preparation time. The analysis of mean ITs revealed improvements in the practice group but not in the control group, independent of the type of pass performed. The distribution analyses complemented these findings as it showed that the improvement in participants’ performance with increasing practice can mainly be attributed to a reduction of the exponential part of the distribution (parameter tau).}}, author = {{Böer, Nils Tobias and Schütz, Christoph and Weigelt, Matthias and Güldenpenning, Iris}}, issn = {{0340-0727}}, journal = {{Psychological Research}}, keywords = {{Sport Psychology, Sport Science, Deception, Distribution Analysis}}, number = {{2}}, publisher = {{Springer Science and Business Media LLC}}, title = {{{How does practice modulate fake-production costs in a basketball task? Analyses of frequency distributions and mixture effects}}}, doi = {{10.1007/s00426-025-02084-6}}, volume = {{89}}, year = {{2025}}, } @inproceedings{62116, author = {{Böer, Nils Tobias and Güldenpenning, Iris and Weigelt, Matthias}}, booktitle = {{57th Herbsttreffen der experimentellen Kognitionspsychologie (HExKoP)}}, keywords = {{Deception, Sport Psychology, Social Interaction}}, location = {{Trier}}, title = {{{The mere presence of a social partner modulates fake-production costs}}}, year = {{2025}}, } @inproceedings{59090, author = {{Wickemeyer, Carolin and Güldenpenning, Iris and Weigelt, Matthias}}, booktitle = {{Abstracts of the 56th Autumn Meeting of Experimental Cognitive Psychology (HExKoP) }}, editor = {{Weigelt, M.}}, location = {{Paderborn}}, pages = {{9}}, title = {{{Response inhibition for the basketball pump fake with responses of different complexity}}}, year = {{2025}}, } @inproceedings{59146, author = {{Margraf, Linda and Krause, Daniel and Blischke, Klaus and Arning, Larissa and Weigelt, Matthias}}, editor = {{Hermsdörfer, Joachim and Stadler, Waltraud and Gulde, Philipp and Franklin, David W.}}, location = {{Munich}}, title = {{{Effects of the COMT Val158Met polymorphism on neural augmented-feedback processing and motor automatization.}}}, year = {{2025}}, } @inproceedings{60281, author = {{Güldenpenning, Iris and Jackson, Robin C. and Weigelt, Matthias}}, booktitle = {{57. Jahrestagung der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Sportpsychologie (ASP)}}, editor = {{Kullik, Lisa and Birnkraut, Tim and Kellmann, Michael}}, location = {{Bochum}}, title = {{{The influence of action outcome probability and expertise on the size of the head-fake effect in basketball}}}, year = {{2025}}, } @inproceedings{65259, author = {{Böer, Nils Tobias and Güldenpenning, Iris and Weigelt, Matthias}}, booktitle = {{67th Conference of Experimental Psychologists}}, editor = {{Lê-Hoa Võ, Melissa and Fiebach, Christian and Shing, Yee Lee and Sammler, Daniela and Windmann, Sabine and Kaiser, Jochen}}, keywords = {{deception, action preparation, perception, movement planning, sport psychology}}, location = {{Frankfurt am Main}}, pages = {{132}}, title = {{{Differences of producing head fakes with and without a social partner}}}, year = {{2025}}, } @inproceedings{60133, author = {{Böer, Nils Tobias and Güldenpenning, Iris and Weigelt, Matthias}}, booktitle = {{Abstracts of the 57th Annual Conference of the German Association of Sport Psychology}}, editor = {{Kullik, Lisa and Birnkraut, Tim and Kellmann, Michael}}, location = {{Bochum}}, pages = {{105}}, title = {{{Differences of producing head fakes with and without a social partner}}}, year = {{2025}}, } @inproceedings{54239, author = {{Margraf, Linda and Krause, Daniel and Weigelt, Matthias}}, editor = {{Koester, D. and Krämer, L. and Fuhlert , L. and Everding, J. and Weilharter, F. and Marlovitz, A. }}, isbn = {{978-3-00-078882-6}}, location = {{Berlin}}, publisher = {{BSP Business & Law School Berlin}}, title = {{{Further information about neural valence-dependent processing of augmented feedback in extensive motor practice: An analysis of frontal theta-band activity}}}, year = {{2024}}, }