http://mindhacks.com/2011/10/20/the-hot-hand-smacks-back/ Neuroscience and psychology news and views. Wed, 22 May 2013 13:23:03 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://mindhacks.com/2011/10/20/the-hot-hand-smacks-back/#comment-22886 Sun, 30 Oct 2011 12:02:20 +0000 http://mindhacks.com/?p=20093#comment-22886 [...] The NBA lockout isn’t quite as over as the media was hoping it would be at this point. However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t basketball stories coming out. A new study has shown that there is such a thing as the hot hand in basketball. (Mind Hacks) [...]

]]> http://mindhacks.com/2011/10/20/the-hot-hand-smacks-back/#comment-22837 Fri, 28 Oct 2011 18:59:43 +0000 http://mindhacks.com/?p=20093#comment-22837 I think you’re spot on. I remember looking at the original study in a psychology class in college and finding it hard to digest. I didn’t like the data they used to make the conclusion. If I remember correctly, the study looked at whether or not making a basket, makes it more likely for a player to make the next basket, but that’s missing the true meaning of the ‘hot hand’. Shooting the ball is partly mechanical, but a big part of it is mental, so being in ‘flow’, i.e. not over-thinking your shot, not having a bad mental attitude, makes a huge difference in how many shots you will make. there’s no make-miss pattern to look for. That being said, I’d imagine it’s pretty hard to come up with a mathematical formula that describes ‘flow’.

]]> http://mindhacks.com/2011/10/20/the-hot-hand-smacks-back/#comment-22613 Mon, 24 Oct 2011 13:16:34 +0000 http://mindhacks.com/?p=20093#comment-22613 [...] Hacks explains: A famous 1985 study by psychologist Thomas Gilovich and his colleagues looked at the ‘hot [...]

]]> http://mindhacks.com/2011/10/20/the-hot-hand-smacks-back/#comment-22574 Sun, 23 Oct 2011 20:11:27 +0000 http://mindhacks.com/?p=20093#comment-22574 [...] The hot hand smacks back « Mind Hacks – via mindhacks.com – a new study has hard data to show the hot hand really exists and may turn one of the most widely cited ‘cognitive illusions’ on its head. [...]

]]> http://mindhacks.com/2011/10/20/the-hot-hand-smacks-back/#comment-22563 Sun, 23 Oct 2011 01:09:27 +0000 http://mindhacks.com/?p=20093#comment-22563 I wonder if the Gilovich data doesn’t itself support the hot hand hypothesis. Suppose that there is no such thing as a hot hand – each player has an unchanging probability of making a shot as a function of his skill level – but that there is a belief in the hot hand. In that case, the opposition team will take steps to prevent someone who has a hot hand from getting shooting opportunities. So if there is no hot hand, then we ought to expect that players who are thought to have hot hands will *under*perform: do worse than their skill level would suggest, due to the effects of the opposition on their success. If we do not see underperformance, but rather constant performance, that is evidence that there is a hot hand: a player is doing better than expected, given the attention paid to them by the opposition.

]]> http://mindhacks.com/2011/10/20/the-hot-hand-smacks-back/#comment-22559 Sat, 22 Oct 2011 21:59:59 +0000 http://mindhacks.com/?p=20093#comment-22559 The hot hand idea seems to me almost certainly true. Imagine, for a moment, the ‘cold hand’. If a player is upset, stressed, distracted, for a period of 20 minutes, we wouldn’t be surprised if he/she performed missed the shot a large number of times (beyond random chance). That, in itself, makes it understandable that during periods devoid of such interferences the player performs above his mean performance level (since the mean performance included performance during the periods of distraction, stress… I think there’s more to it than that, but this may explain a lot. I.e., good performance occurs during periods when there are no factors leading to bad performance.

]]> http://mindhacks.com/2011/10/20/the-hot-hand-smacks-back/#comment-22544 Sat, 22 Oct 2011 16:37:46 +0000 http://mindhacks.com/?p=20093#comment-22544 There might be some use in considering this phenomenon in relation to cerebellar forward and inverse models. We provided some summaries in these two papers: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21630084 and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20680539

]]> http://mindhacks.com/2011/10/20/the-hot-hand-smacks-back/#comment-22511 Fri, 21 Oct 2011 21:11:04 +0000 http://mindhacks.com/?p=20093#comment-22511 I believe the “hot hand” may be attributable to “flow” psychology ala Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. As ones personal competence in the skills needed to perform any activity increase and they meet increasing success a decrease in conscious awareness (critical self commentary) of ones actions decreases allowing for more spontaneous, and efficient reactions. Especially in the face of targeted defensive obstacles (two defenders at the net, the nasty slider hitting the outside corner) an “automatic” millisecond reaction is what works.

]]> http://mindhacks.com/2011/10/20/the-hot-hand-smacks-back/#comment-22462 Thu, 20 Oct 2011 22:14:11 +0000 http://mindhacks.com/?p=20093#comment-22462 The problem with this study is that it examines what is essentially a solitary activity within a team sport.

]]> http://mindhacks.com/2011/10/20/the-hot-hand-smacks-back/#comment-22457 Thu, 20 Oct 2011 18:35:22 +0000 http://mindhacks.com/?p=20093#comment-22457 [...] the great blog Mind Hacks: Because of this, the new study looked at volleyball where the players are separated by a net and [...]

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