Mental Rotation of Tactical Instruction Displays Affects Information Processing Demand and Execution Accuracy in Basketball.

Purpose: In sports games, coaches often use tactic boards to present tactical instructions during time-outs (e.g., 20 s to 60 s in basketball).

Control over the processing of the opponent's gaze direction in basketball experts.

Basketball players' responses to an opposing players' pass direction are typically delayed when the opposing player gazes in another than the pass direction. Here, we studied the role of basketball expertise on this, the so-called head-fake effect, in three groups of participants (basketball experts, soccer players, and non-athletes). The specific focus was on the dependency of the head-fake effect on previous fake experience as an index of control over the processing of task-irrelevant gaze information.