“Dove tirerà?” Un paradigma sperimentale per l’indagine del riconoscimento delle intenzioni del giocatore nel calcio del rigore [“Where will he shoot?” An experimental paradigm for the investigation of the intentions recognition of the soccer player in penalty kick]

[Autom. eng. transl.] A new experimental paradigm was implemented to test the hypothesis of the involvement of the mirror neuron system in a task of predicting the outcome of a motor action, that is, the trajectory of the ball in a penalty kick. In particular, an experimental task was developed by manipulating a series of footage of penalty kicks, taken by professional footballers and taken from the goalkeeper's point of view, so that the video would stop when the footballer's foot touched. the ball. It has been hypothesized that the characteristics of the player's movements during the run-up provide clues as to the direction of the ball's trajectory. Furthermore, it has been hypothesized that subjects with football experience correctly interpret these clues thanks to the brain activation of the motor representations of the movements they use during the execution of the penalty kick. The performance of 20 right-handed university students in the experimental penalty shootout task, assessed in terms of speed and accuracy, was related to mental rotation, basic reactivity, football experience, familiarity and interest in football matches. The results showed that the percentage of correct responses to the ball trajectory recognition task was significantly higher than chance. Furthermore, it was observed that the football experience plays a role in determining the speed of the subjects in the experimental task: the more experienced are less impulsive.