The influence of low and high spatial frequency visual information on the anticipation of soccer penalty kicks

Research on anticipation within sport has been recently advanced by the isolation of visual spatial frequencies. The present study seeks to adapt this body of work for the context of anticipating penalty kicks within soccer. Across two experiments, participants had to anticipate the direction of pre-recorded penalty kicks that were occluded at the point of ball contact. The penalty kicks were presented with low (LSF; ‘blurred’), high (HSF; ‘edge detection’ [i.e., sharp image outlines]) or unfiltered (i.e., original footage) spatial frequencies. Experiment 1 involved a lab-controlled setting using a life-sized display of the non-deceptive penalty kicks with outfield participants, which indicated no effect of visual condition. Experiment 2 involved a remote online protocol that displayed deceptive and non-deceptive penalty kicks with goalkeeper participants. While there was a decline in the anticipation of deceptive compared to non-deceptive kicks for the unfiltered condition, there was no such decline for the LSF and HSF conditions. We suggest that the LSF and HSF conditions were able to overcome deception because of the isolating global kinematic and local detailed cues, respectively. • Spatial frequency filtering could help processing advance cues for anticipation • Low, high and unfiltered (standard) spatial frequency displays of penalty kicks • No influence on the anticipation of non-deceptive kicks • Superior anticipation of deceptive kicks under low and high compared to unfiltered • Filtering helps to reallocate attention and unmask spatial frequency channels