Control of Visual Attention during the Basketball Free Throw

What is the role of vision and the higher attentional processes in achieving high levels of accuracy in a skill like the basketball free throw? A question like this intrigues me for two reasons. By studying how the human becomes exceptionally accurate in skills like the golf putt 12 and free throw.J! we are able to understand more fully the contribution of the higher neural systems and visual attention networks 5 in motor control. Second, although skills like the putt and free throw pose challenging experimental problems, these are offset by benefits derived from studying the human in challenging settings, replete with the drama of real-world events. Such a drama is currently offered by shooting performance in basketball. Accuracy has dropped in field shooting over the past 10 years, from a 10-year high in 1984 of 49% to less than 47% in 1994.8 Free throw percentages have also declined to 73%, to the worst in 25 years according to Taylor. 8 The free throw is an intriguing shot. Although performed without any opposition from only 15 feet, many highly skilled National Basketball athletes have great difficulty with it." Most conspicuous are the center position players who draw a lot of fouls and thus free throws, but have the lowest percentage: 67% in 1994 compared with 79% for the more accurate point guards. Among the centers, one stands out as legendary in his difficulty. Shaquille O'Neal shot 46.5% during the 1995 to 1996 season." How could such a superbly skilled athlete shoot so poorly? Evidence will be presented in this paper that Shaquille's difficulties may be rooted in how he has learned to control vision as he shoots. He should fixate the hoop front for a longer duration as he prepares the shot and then, as the shot is initiated and the ball enters his visual field, he should suppress vision, a sequence of location-suppression gaze behaviors. 11 To understand the role of vision in the free throw, I recorded the eye movements (or, more correctly, the gaze behaviors) of eight expert and eight near-expert athletes