Context-specific adaptation for head fakes in basketball: a study on player-specific fake-frequency schedules

In basketball, an attacking player often plays a pass to one side while looking to the other side. This head fake provokes a conflict in the observing opponent, as the processing of the head orientation interferes with the processing of the pass direction. Accordingly, responses to passes with head fakes are slower and result in more errors than responses to passes without head fakes (head-fake effect). The head-fake effect and structurally similar interference effects (e.g., Stroop effect) are modulated by the frequency of conflicting trials. Previous studies mostly applied a block-wise manipulation of proportion congruency. However, in basketball (and also in other team sports), where different individual opponents can be encountered, it might be important to take the individual frequency (e.g., 20% vs. 80%) of these opponents into account. Therefore, the present study investigates the possibility to quickly (i.e., on a trial-by-trial basis) reconfigure the response behavior to different proportions of incongruent trials, which are contingent on different basketball players. Results point out that participants indeed adapted to the fake-frequency of different basketball players, which could be the result of strategic adaptation processes. Multi-level analyses, however, indicate that a substantial portion of the player-specific adaptation to fake frequencies is accounted by episodic retrieval processes, suggesting that item-specific proportion congruency effects can be explained in terms of stimulus-response binding and retrieval: The head orientation (e.g., to the right) of a current stimulus retrieves the last episode with the same head orientation including the response that was part of this last episode. Thus, from a theoretical perspective, an attacking player would provoke the strongest detrimental effect on an opponent if s/he repeats the same head movement but changes the direction of the pass. Whether it is at all possible to strategically apply this recommendation in practice needs still to be answered.