Predicting the length of volleyball serves: The role of early auditory and visual information

In light of the growing body of research that is revealing the significant role of the auditory domain in sport, the present study aims to investigate the contribution of early auditory and visual information to the prediction of volleyball serves' length. To this purpose, three within-subjects experiments were run, which differed among them in terms of stimuli (audiovisual congruent vs audiovisual incongruent; audio only vs video only) and/or in terms of number of possible answers. In particular, expert volleyball players were asked to predict the length of temporally occluded overhand serves, choosing among either two or three possible landing sectors. Response accuracy and response times were measured. For the incongruent stimuli, the results revealed that the percentage of predictions in line with early auditory information was significantly higher than the respective percentage of predictions in line with early visual information. For unimodal stimuli, prediction accuracy was significantly higher on the basis of auditory information than on the basis of visual information, without any difference on response times. Taken together, the results highlighted the relevance of early auditory information for the prediction of volleyball serves' length.