Examining the Impact of an Attacker's Handedness on Anticipatory Judgments in Volleyball

Introduction

An athlete's left-handedness has a distinctly negative impact on an opponents' perceptual judgments.  This perceptual challenge leads lefties to a distinct advantage in interactive sports.[1]  In particular, left-handers' movements are more difficult to anticipate than those of their right-handed counterparts and the condition appears across a variety of sports including, soccer, volleyball, and tennis.[2]

Why are Lefties Harder to Read?

In the search for why, the emerging consensus is that athletes are under-exposed to left-handers and thus possess a greater lack of perceptual familiarity with their sport-specific movements.  Since the skill of anticipation depends heavily on accurately assessing the kinematic cues of opponents, less exposure to those cues equates to less opportunities to learn and a resulting disadvantage in reading performance.[3]  In other words, skilled perceptual judgment is attuned to more frequently encountered actions.  Indeed, this principle has lead one research group to observe, "[i]n volleyball players, the repetitive confrontation primarily with right-handed opponents in practice and competition is likely to explain better performance against right-handers.[4]

So this takes us to left-handedness in volleyball.  If lefties do have an advantage, how far does it extend into the sport and can the advantage be neutralized?  These issues and others have important implications for coaching professionals teaching tactical decisions, designing practice environments, and recruiting athletes to their programs.

Original Research - Anticipation of Shot Direction

As previously reported in an earlier post (Reading Revisited: The Challenge of Reading Left-Handers in Volleyball) (available here), researchers in 2012 sought to determine whether left-handed opponents were more difficult to read when attacking a volleyball by asking groups of skilled and novice players to predict the shot directions of left- and right-handed attacks in a video-based anticipation test.  Participants in both groups were better at predicting the directional outcome of  right-handed compared to left-handed attacks, with skilled players outperforming novices overall.[5]

If the left-handers' shot direction proved more difficult to predict than that of the right-handed players, would the handedness effect also extend to reading the lefties' choice of attack type?  Recent findings provide evidence that it does.

Recent Research - Anticipation of Shot Selection

A study published in Human Movement Science examined whether opponents shown video of an attack sequence could predict the type of attack ("smash" or "lob") planned by left- and right-handers with equivalent accuracy.[6]

Methods and Procedure

A total of 48 skilled volleyball players and novices participated by watching videos of left- and right-handed attacks on a computer screen. The videos were filmed from the perspective of a defensive player in either zones 1 or 5 of a volleyball court.  Each sequence included a reception/pass and a set to an attacker.  Attackers performed either hard or soft shots - "smashes" or lobs."  Videos lasted three seconds each and were temporally occluded to stop at the moment the attacker contacted the ball.

Further, to test whether prediction accuracy varied according to time in the sequence,each attack was occluded at six different time points relative to the moment of hand-to-ball contact: (a) 600 ms prior to contact, (b) 480 ms prior to contact, (c) 360 ms prior to contact, (d) 240 ms prior to contact, (e) 120 ms prior to contact and (f) at contact with the ball.  After the end of each video participants indicated whether they thought the attacker would perform a "smash" or a "lob."  There was not time limit for making the decision. 

Findings

Consistent with previous findings, skilled players outperformed novices in correctly anticipating the type of attack but left-handed attacks were harder to predict than right-handed attacks.  "A main effect for attackers' hand provided support for the notion that right-handed actions are easier to anticipate than left-handed actions.  Thus, an opponent's handedness seem to not only affect visual anticipation of outcome direction, but also the prediction of the type of an action (here, smash vs. lob in volleyball attacks)."[7]  Lefties, it seems are far more difficult to predict whether hitting or shooting the ball and regardless of the direction of their attack.

The question still remains as to why.  If it's simply the case that volleyball players train and compete against righties more than lefties and so are better attuned to the right-hander's movements why did both the experienced and inexperienced players underperform in predicting left-handed attacks?  Certainly the novices were not relying on their years of experience in the game against right-handers.[8]  The authors themselves acknowledge that the finding "appears unexpected" given the lack of competitive experience for the novices and posit that the novices' recreational exposure to volleyball likely over-exposed them to right-handed actions and that imbalanced experience provoked the handedness effect in the study.  

Clearly, its a question awaiting further study and one that is essential to our understanding of how best to train our volleyball athletes to neutralize the "lefty advantage."

Training Implications

Armed with knowledge that left-handers are more difficult to read what can we coaches do to improve our athletes' performances? Regardless of the need for more study it seems enticing to think that exposing our athletes more often to lefties in practice will increase opportunities to learn from their presence.  It's a practice fairly common in professional tennis with at least some anecdotal evidence to support it,[9] but no reported data supporting either short- or long-term improvement resulting from the practice.  It is also worth noting that tennis professionals seem to seek out lefty training opponents more to practice standard tactical adjustments against them and less to refine visual perceptual acumen.

On the experimental side, there is some evidence to support the notion that increased visual exposure to left-handed movements can reduce the effect of the left-hander's advantage.  In research published in the Journal of Sports Sciences, for example, a video-based perceptual training program was shown to improve the performance of participants predicting the directional outcome of left-handed penalty shots in handball.[10]  It thus seems plausible that a coaching manipulation of the training environment to increase the prevalence of left-handed opponents in volleyball is a potentially fruitful avenue of performance enhancement.


NOTES

[1] We address here an only "advantage" resulting specifically from being less predictable and not from the tactical preferences of opponents.  See Loffing, F., Hagemann, N., & Strauss, B. (2010).  Automated processes in tennis: Do left-handed players benefit from the tactical preferences of their opponents?  Journal of Sports Sciences, 28, 435-443.  See also, Sampras, P., (1998). Don't let southpaws scare you: After losing some tough matches to left-handers, I've learned how to handle them.  Tennis, 34, 142-45 (discussing tactical advantages for left-handed tennis players resulting from tennis scoring system).

[2] McMorris, T., & Colenso, S. (1996). Anticipation of professional soccer goalkeepers when facing right- and left-footed penalty kicks. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 82, 931–934.  Loffing, F., Schorer, J., Hagemann, N., Baker, J., (2012).  On the advantage of being left-handed in volleyball: further evidence of the specificity of skilled visual perception.  Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 74, 446-453.  Hagemann N (2009) The advantage of being left-handed in interactive sports. Atten Percept Psycho 71: 1641–1648 (tennis stroke).

[3] Urgesi, C., Savonitto, M. M., Fabbro, F., & Aglioti, S. M. (2012). Long- and short-term plastic modeling of action prediction abilities in volleyball.  Psychological Research, 76, 542-560.

[4]  Loffing, F., Hagemann, N., Schorer, J., & Baker, J. (2015).  Skilled players' and novices' difficulty anticipating left- vs. right-handed opponents' action intentions varies across different points in time. Human Movement Science, 40, 410-21, 417.

[5]  Loffing, F., Schorer, J., Hagemann, N., Baker, J., (2012).  On the advantage of being left-handed in volleyball: further evidence of the specificity of skilled visual perception.  Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 74, 446-453.

[6]  Loffing, F., Hagemann, N., Schorer, J., & Baker, J. (2015).  Skilled players' and novices' difficulty anticipating left- vs. right-handed opponents' action intentions varies across different points in time. Human Movement Science, 40, 410-21, 417.

[7]  Loffing, F., Hagemann, N., Schorer, J., & Baker, J. (2015).  Skilled players' and novices' difficulty anticipating left- vs. right-handed opponents' action intentions varies across different points in time. Human Movement Science, 40, 410-21, 417.

[8]  The novice participant group was comprised of 18 males and 8 females with a collective mean age of 24.77 years and "no experience in competitive volleyball or beach volleyball."  The authors acknowledge that the handedness-dependent performance differences in novices "appears unexpected." 

[9]  Sampras, P., (1998). Don't let southpaws scare you: After losing some tough matches to left-handers, I've learned how to handle them.  Tennis, 34, 142-45 (discussing tactical advantages for left-handed tennis players resulting from tennis scoring system and noting common practice to train against left-handers in advance of matches).  See also Crouse, K. (2011).  Left-Handers Have Edge in Slice and Singularity.  N.Y. Times (June 26, 2011), available at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/27/sports/tennis/2011-wimbledon-left-handers-have-benefit-of-slice-and-singularity.html?_r=0 (noting practice of training against left-handers in advance of matches to be played against lefty opponents).

[10]  Loffing, F., Schorer, J., Hagemann, N., Baker, J., (2012).  Human handedness in interactive situations: Negative perceptual frequency effects can be reversed!  Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 74, 446-453.

Perception and Motor Skill in Reading Shot Location in Beach Volleyball - Part II

Participants, Method, Stimulus and Procedure

The VU team invited 32 participants who were 8 expert beach players, 8 expert beach coaches, who formerly were expert players, 8 expert referees, who had not reached expert levels of play, and an inexperienced control group of 8 novices to participate.  Each group watched video clips of attacking sequences and predicted the depth and direction of the shot at various times before the attack.

All of the clips were culled from 25 women’s World Tour beach volleyball matches and included a pass, a set and an attack.  They were recorded approximately 6 meters behind the end-line, from the perspective of a defensive player.  Videos were progressively occluded at three different times:  (a) at setter-ball contact, (b) when the set was half-way to the hitter, and (c) at hitter-ball contact.[5]  Sequences were balanced for attacks from the left- and right-side, and in all sequences the blocker stayed at the net.   Also, because the defender was in view, clips equally balanced correct and incorrect anticipatory movements by the defensive player.  After viewing each sequence, participants had three seconds to decide whether the ball was attacked to the short or deep line or to the short or deep angle.[6]

Motor Experience Contributes to Reading Ability

Analysis of overall performances revealed that the expert players and coaches predicted shot location more accurately than novices, while the referees did not.   In addition, players outperformed both referees and novices in the latest occlusion condition.[7]  Accordingly, since “the group with the highest perceptual-motor expertise (and, notably, less watching experience) outperformed experience watchers,” the findings suggest that perceptual motor experience does contribute to anticipatory skills in beach volleyball.

An issue for further research, according to the authors, will be to study whether players were better readers because they more efficiently utilized cues from the video frame showing hitter-ball contact (3^rd occlusion point) or because they were superior at culling information from the entire offensive sequence.

Reading Depth and Direction

Comparing results on depth and direction the results indicate that reading the shot depth in beach volleyball is significantly more difficult than reading shot direction.   Overall accuracy scores were higher for direction predictions than depth judgments in the latest occlusion condition with players, coaches and referees all outperforming novices in reading whether the ball was attacked cross-court or down the line.  The available evidence therefore suggests that coaches should include more opportunities in practice for players to read cues indicative of short and deep shots in the game.  Knowledge of this weakness may also counsel in favor of positional adjustments to defensive players and movement training to improve overall small area quickness and account for potential depth related mis-reads in the game

Conclusion

Like the indoor game, the sport of beach volleyball is overwhelmingly played between contacts.  While those contacts are extremely important indicators of success, the ability to anticipate opponent’s intentions and prepare for the next contact is a proven skill variable separating the most accomplished players from their less skilled counterparts.

Over a decade ago, sports science determined that “[t]here is little doubt . . . that the ability to extract and use the information available from an opponent’s movement pattern is a limiting factor to successful performance for less skilled performers.”[8].  The results of the present study provide experimental evidence that motor experience gained from playing beach volleyball contributes to the ability to anticipate opponent shots both directionally and for depth.  The findings also suggest training emphases and strategies for improving performances in the game.

Since its birth on the shores of southern California, the sport of beach volleyball is now an emerging collegiate sport in the United States, has enormous worldwide popularity, and is an official summer sport of the Olympic Games.  As research science continues to teach us how great readers anticipate we coaches have an obligation to learn the science of the sport and develop principled methods for training the next generation of beach volleyball athletes.  

NOTES

[1] Aglioti, S.M., Cesari, P., Romani, M., Urgesi, C. (2008).  Action anticipation and motor resonance in elite basketball players.  Nature Neuroscience, 11, 1109-1116; Schutz-Bosbach, S., Prinz, W. (2007).  Perceptual resonance: Action-induced modulation of perception.  Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 349-355.

[2] Aglioti, S.M., Cesari, P., Romani, M., Urgesi, C. (2008).  Action anticipation and motor resonance in elite basketball players.  Nature Neuroscience, 11, 1109-1116.

[3] Urgesi, C., Savonitto, M. M., Fabbro, F., & Aglioti, S. M. (2012). Long- and short-term plastic modeling of action prediction abilities in volleyball.  Psychological Research, 76, 542-560.

[4] Canal-Bruland, R., Mooren, M., Savelsbergh, G. (2011).  Differentiating expert’s anticipatory skills in beach volleyball.  Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport 82:4 667-674.  I am grateful to Professor Canal-Bruland for providing me with a copy of the research.

[5] For an excellent discussion of the possible limitations of occlusion paradigms, see van der Kamp, J., Rivas, F., van Doorn, H., & Savelsbergh, G. (2008).  Ventral and dorsal contributions in visual anticipation in fast ball sports.  International Journal of Sport Psychology, 39, 100-130.

[6] Two stimulus conditions of the study have limiting effects.  First, it is unclear what impact, if any, visible blocker’s movements played in the participant’s predictions.  Also, anticipation ability was measured as a function of viewing randomized progressively occluded clips of offensive sequences.  Therefore, anticipation scores did not account for participant’s abilities to utilize other cues that commonly inform defensive reads in beach volleyball such as situational factors, opponent’s recent history and pattern recognition. 

[7] Only in the latest occlusion condition (at hitter-ball contact) did participants predict shot location more accurately than chance.

[8] Farrow, D., Abernathy, B. (2002).  Can anticipatory skills be learned through implicit video-based perceptual training?  Journal of Sports Sciences 20, 471-485.

Perception and Motor Skill in Reading Shot Location in Beach Volleyball - Parts I & II

Elite sports performers possess the twin abilities to repeatedly execute complex actions and anticipate the behavior of other players.  Indeed, anticipatory skill is one of the most clearly established variables distinguishing highly successful athletes from their less accomplished counterparts.

In the sport of volleyball, anticipation is a key ingredient in successful performance.   Blockers who can read setter and hitter intentions, passers who can read servers and ball flight, and defenders who can anticipate shot speed, depth and direction all have an advantage over players whose anticipatory skills are less developed.

The ability to read is likewise critical to success in the beach game.  With more court to cover and fewer teammates to help, defensive success in beach volleyball is inextricably intertwined with the ability to anticipate an opponent’s offensive intentions.   The growing dynamics of beach volleyball offenses, fewer blockers at the net compared to indoors and a playing surface that constrains small area quickness highlight the need for beach defenders to develop acute reading abilities.

How Do Great Readers Anticipate?

We’ve all seen volleyball players who just seem to know where the ball is going.  So how did they do it, and why are some athletes better than others in figuring out their opponents?  As it turns out, athletes with superior reading abilities do some rather than unique things that less capable readers do not. 

Principles garnered from scientific literature show that elite athletes: (1) make superior use of anticipatory visual cues, (2) utilize unique perceptual strategies, (3) employ efficient visual search patterns, (4) exhibit fast information-movement coupling (integrating vision and action); and (5) demonstrate superior pattern recognition ability.  Essentially, superior readers see the game in a very unique way from others -- but their perceptual expertise is not the whole story.

While we know that elite athletes are better than novices at reading, and we know a lot about how they do it, we still don’t know everything that contributes to the why?  Why is it that some athletes see the game so uniquely, extracting information from everything that’s going on, and thus are better able to accurately predict what is about to happen?  

Perceptual vs. Motor Experience

One of the most important questions scientists are studying to better understand the skill of reading is whether elite athlete’s motor skills in addition to their perceptual experience contribute to anticipation abilities.

There are two related accounts.

In one view, anticipation ability is a function of perceptual experience.  In this view, elite level athletes’ extensive exposure to the game enhances their sensitivity to the relevant cues that reveal what other players intend to do.

Another view says that athletes’ motor skills also have something to do with it.  This view links perceptual experience with motor experience by positing that skilled athlete’s motor experience contributes to their superior anticipation abilities. 

The developing idea is that athletes are perceptually better attuned to actions within their own motor repertoire.  Thus elite athletes are better at identifying the kinematic cues that indicate in others an intention to perform the same or similar skills the athletes themselves are capable of performing.[1]  Research comparing the anticipation ability of elite level athletes with those possessed primarily of perceptual experience alone (e.g., coaches, referees and fans) seems to support this view.   

For example a team of Italian researchers found that expert basketball players were able to predict the success of free throws more accurately and quickly than coaches and journalists who lacked playing experience.[2]  Evidence published this year similarly found that volleyball athletes were better able to utilize kinematic information to predict the fate of float serves more accurately than expert watchers and novices who did not play the game.[3]

Anticipation in Beach Volleyball Defense

A new study from researchers at the VU University in Amsterdam recently contributed to our understanding of elite reading ability in the sport of beach volleyball.

The researchers brought together beach volleyball players, coaches, referees and novices to compare their performances in a beach volleyball defensive reading experiment.  The VU team sought to isolate participants with perceptual experience (referees) from participants with perceptual and motor experience (players and coaches) in order better to understand the contributions of perceptual and motor experience to action anticipation in beach volleyball.

Based on current research suggesting that motor experience does contribute to anticipatory skills, the team predicted that the players and coaches would perform better than the referees and novices.  The research was published in the Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport.[4]

[Continued in Part II - click here]

The Role of Observation and Motor Experience in Reading a Float Serve in Volleyball

The importance of service reception in women’s volleyball is well established.  Statistical data consistently have confirmed the close correlation of multi-option passing and winning.  One of the most basic elements of success in serve receive is the ability to predict the flight of the ball.  Misjudgments in ball flight commonly produce poor passes and single option passes are extremely inefficient events in the game.  Thus, developing players with the skill to accurately predict the flight of the ball during the serve receive phase of the game should be a high coaching priority.

So how do we get our players to make these predictions?  Do we recruit players that we think have an innate ability to track a ball?  Do we wait for players with excellent reading skills to just walk into the gym?  The answer is we train them.  Action prediction ability in sport is neither a magical quality nor an innate talent.  It’s a learned skill, and like any skill, it should be trained from the earliest stages of a player’s development and continuously honed throughout her career.  As reading is perhaps the most important skill in the game, the more we know about it the better we can teach it.

A recent study published in Psychological Research offers valuable insights into the elements that contribute to successful service-reading abilities in volleyball players[1].

Action Prediction Abilities in Volleyball

A team of Italian researchers examined the role of visual and motor experience in the ability of athletes to predict the action of float serves in volleyball.  The authors compared the reading abilities of three groups of adult, right-handed females in their mid-twenties.  Group 1 consisted of 12 volleyball athletes with about 15 years of playing experience (experts).  Group 2 was comprised of 12 supporters who had no experience playing volleyball but who had regularly attended to watching volleyball for at least 10 years (watchers).  Group 3 was comprised of 12 adults with no volleyball experience at all (novices).

Participants were shown video clips of two experienced players performing a series of float serves.  Videos showed a front- and back-view of the server.  Clips were shown using a modified temporal occlusion in which only the body movements of the server or only the ball was shown.  Half of the clips showed the beginning of the action to the point of the server’s contact with the ball, thus showing only the server’s body kinematics; the other half showed the moment of contact to the initial falling trajectory of the serve (when it was approximately at the height of the net), thus showing only the ball trajectory.

   

Participants were asked to view the clips and predict as fast as possible whether the ball was served in our out of the court.  Notably, in the front-view perspective the ball was not fully visible in the last part of ball trajectory – when the ball was falling to the floor.

Study Results

What the researchers found was a mix of predictable and not so predictable results.  The volleyball athletes outperformed the novices in predicting serves both from reads based on the server’s body kinematics and the ball trajectory – regardless of the viewing perspective.  These results confirm years of research consistently showing the superior action-prediction abilities of elite athletes in their sports, including volleyball.

So what about the watchers?  Did their visual experience contribute to accurate predictions although they had no playing experience?  The evidence suggests that it did.  Although watchers were again outperformed by athletes, the watchers outperformed novices in one important phase - predicting the serve when viewed from behind the server.    

According to the authors, since the late stages of ball flight stayed in view only for the back-view clips, the watchers’ visual experience seems to have improved only their ability to read the serve by using this late ball flight information.  In contrast, the volleyball athletes showed proficiency in utilizing both early and late cues from ball trajectory which were visible in both the front and back view videos.

Significance for Coaching

The participant-athletes’ superior performance in predicting ball flight based on the server’s body movements confirms again the profound implications of teaching players how to read.  With serve reception playing a critical role in winning volleyball matches coaches should be eager to incorporate ways to improve players’ serve-receive reading skills.

So how do we do this?

Serve Receive Actual Serves - Reading the Server

Serving and passing must occupy a significant portion of practice time.  Passers should be passing live serves – and lots of them.  Success in predicting ball flight in volleyball comes in part from the twin abilities to recognize cues in the server’s behavior and then link those cues to results.  When coaches toss balls to players or chip balls in from the sideline, players are robbed of the cues they need to learn from actual servers and consequently are deprived of valuable opportunities to link cues with results.   Only through receiving served balls from real servers do players have an opportunity to identify and interpret the kinematic cues of real servers and develop the motor experience that is essential to predicting the flight of served volleyballs.

But we can’t just set up serving and passing games.  Like all training, serve receive practice should be accompanied by effective feedback.  We should coach players what cues to look for, ask them what they see, and guide them to understand the connection between what they see and how the ball reacts.  Practice with feedback is the only principled basis for teaching the skill of reading.

Importance of Early Ball Flight - Reading the Ball

In addition to planning lots of serving and passing games coaches must emphasize the value of early preparation in serve receive.  The instant research suggests that athletes’ advanced reading abilities are tied to their unique skills in reading both kinematic cues and the initial phase of ball trajectory.  In other words, athletes draw heavily from what is happening on the other side of the net.  Emphasizing early visual preparation teaches athletes that much of their success in service reception can be determined long before their “technique” comes into play.

NOTES

[1]   Urgesi, C., Savonitto, M. M., Fabbro, F., & Aglioti, S. M. (2012). Long- and short-term plastic modeling of action prediction abilities in volleyball.  Psychological Research, 76:542-560.

Reading Revisited: The Challenge of Reading Left-Handers in Volleyball

Last year I wrote about teaching the skill of "reading" in volleyball and posited that we coaches need to spend a lot more practice time teaching this skill to our players by (a) creating practice environments that afford the players game-like reading opportunities; and (b) teaching players what cues to look for and what they mean by giving effective feedback.  Here's an update.

Reading Can Be Taught

Whether we call it the "premier skill" in the game (Hugh McCutcheon) or the "most important skill" (John Kessel), it is by now settled that the skill of reading is in fact trainable and not some mystical innate talent.[1]  When we see volleyball players who always seem to be in the right place, it is because they have advanced cognitive perceptual skills developed from proper training.  A player's ability to forecast the future of the game by seeing, interpreting and responding to the visual cues presented by it is borne of deliberate practice with effective feedback in a game-like training environment. 

So why are we re-visting this great subject of reading in volleyball?  Well, the last six months has produced some very interesting research on the subject that can improve our knowledge of the game and help all of us to coach better.

The Lefty Advantage in Sports

In the last decade and a half research has shown that left handed athletes present considerable difficulties for their opponents in interactive sports.[2]  Lefties are overrepresented in many sports (as compared to their presence in the general population) and their left handedness appears to give them an advantage over their opponents.[3]  The "advantage" seems to be their opponents' greater difficulty in predicting the left-hander's behavior.  For example, soccer goalkeepers have been shown to have a more difficult time predicting ball direction for left-footed opponents,[4] and tennis athletes (regardless of their own handedness) have shown themselves to be better at predicting the direction stroke of right handed as opposed to left-handed opponents.[5]  Researchers have supposed that one explanation for this phenomenon is that players have less experience with left-handed opponents and therefore lack familiarity with their techniques and strategies, leaving opponents to act (react) the same as when faced with a right-hander.[6]  The hypothesis is referred to as the "negative perceptual frequency effect."

Reading Left -Handers in Volleyball

So this takes us to the sport of volleyball.  In a game where the premier skill of the players is accurately predicting the action of opponents, do lefties still maintain an advantage by being less "readable" than their right-handed counterparts?  A study recently published in the journal of Attention, Perception & Psychophysics says "yes."[7] 

To test the negative perceptual frequency effect in the sport of volleyball, researchers invited 18 expert and 18 novice volleyball athletes to predict the shot direction of left- and right-handed attacks.  Participants predicted the outcome of attacks using a video-based occlusion model.  To control the amount of advance visual information (and identify its importance to reading) footage of the attacks was occluded at three different time points: (a) 4 frames prior to hand contact with the ball, (b) 2 frames prior to hand contact, and (c) moment of contact.  Consistent with earlier research, participants performed more poorly predicting the shot direction of left handers, i.e., the lefties were more difficult to read.  Moreover, "the left-right bias" was most distinct when participants were required to make reads based on pre-contact cues (before contact with the ball).  According to the authors, "[t]he study’s findings corroborate the assumption that skilled visual perception is attuned to more frequently encountered actions."

Neutralizing the Left-Hander's Volleyball Advantage

So what can we coaches do with this information?  We must train in reality.  As long as left handed volleyball players continue to play the game we must expose our athletes to more left handed attacks.  We must make familiar what is unfamiliar.  If you have lefties on the team, give them a few extra swings and play defense against their attack.  Let the left handed players hit even if they're not your "hitters."  The training will be good for your defensive players and every player on the team, particularly at the junior level, should have a basic proficiency in attacking anyway.

Coach eye sequencing for your defenders and design drills that allow you to coach them while they perform in a pass-set-hit environment.  Do your defenders use the same eye sequence for lefties and righties?  Watch and coach them.  Ask your players what they see when facing the left-handed attack.  Is it the same as for righties?  Engage your athletes in a dialogue and help guide their discovery; you might find that your players are not focusing on the right kinematic cues against the lefties.  It wouldn't be the first time.  An early study from 1983 that examined the visual search behavior of German volleyball players found that participants incorrectly focused on the right arm and shoulder of attackers even when they were left handed.[8]

The available evidence suggests that the key to neutralizing the "left-handers advantage" is to design practices that promote exposure to lefty tactics and techniques.  This makes intuitive sense and is supported by the most recent research on the subject.[9]  Researchers successfully reversed the negative perception frequency effect in a study published in February by exposing participants to a perceptual training program that improved their reading skills against left-handers.  Apparently anything can be learned with the right kind and amount of practice.

One of our many tasks as coaches is to identify and improve weaknesses in our players and teams.  As the skill of reading plays a critical role in achieving success in volleyball, we have a heightened responsibility to guide our players' development in this area.  Coaches who creatively help athletes become better readers against all attackers are being good for and good to their players and also helping to raise the level of the game in all gyms.

NOTES:

[1]  See Farrow, D. (2008). Reading the play in team sports: yes it’s trainable. Australian Institute of Sport Coaching Magazine; Abernethy, B., Wood, J.M., and Parks, S. (1999). Can the anticipatory skills of experts be learned by novices? Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 70, 313-318.

[2]  Grouis, G., Koidou, I., Tsorbatzoudis, H., and Alexandris, K., (2002).  Handedness in sport.  Journal of Human Movement Studies, 43, 347-361.

[3] Lefties Have Element of Surprise in Sport, Discovery News (Apr. 26, 2012) (available at http://news.discovery.com/adventure/left-handed-athletes-sports-120426.html) (last visited September 26, 2012).

[4] McMorris, T., & Colenso, S. (1996). Anticipation of professional soccer goalkeepers when facing right- and left-footed penalty kicks. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 82, 931–934.

[5] Hagemann, N. (2009).  The advantage of being left-handed in interactive sports. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 71, 1641–1648.

[6] See, e.g., Loffing, Hagemann, N., & Strauss, B. (2010).  Automated processes in tennis: Do left-handed players benefit from the tactical preferences of their opponents?  Journal of Sports Sciences, 28, 435-443.

[7] Loffing, F., Schorer, J., Hagemann, N., Baker, J., (2012).  On the advantage of being left-handed in volleyball: further evidence of the specificity of skilled visual perception.  Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 74, 446-453.

[8] Neumaier, A. (1983). Beobachtungsstrategien und Antizipation beider Abwehr von Volleyballangriffen. [Observational strategies and anticipation during the defence of attacks in volleyball.].  Leistungssport, 13, 5–10 (cited in Loffing, F., Schorer, J., Hagemann, N., Baker, J., (2012).  On the advantage of being left-handed in volleyball: further evidence of the specificity of skilled visual perception.  Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 74, 446-453).

[9] Loffing, F., Schorer, J., Hagemann, N., Baker, J., (2012).  Human handedness in interactive situations: Negative perceptual frequency effects can be reversed!  Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 74, 446-453 (participants underwent a perceptual training program to improve their reading skills against left-handers).