Cognitive load reduces interference by head fakes in basketball.

The head fake in basketball is a deceptive action in sports, where an attacking basketball player gazes in one direction (irrelevant component), but passes the ball to the opposite direction (relevant component). A defending player, who aims to respond to the relevant information displayed by the opponent, faces a situation conceptually similar to well-known interference paradigms (e.g., Stroop task, Eriksen flanker task). Previous research has shown that responses to pass directions are slower and more error prone for head fakes than for direct passes (so called head-fake effect). The head-fake effect depends on participants' ability to focus attention on the relevant stimulus feature. As maintaining this attentional focus conceivably bears on limited capacities, we tested if taxing these capacities by a cognitively demanding concurrent task would change the impact of task-irrelevant information and thus, the size of the head-fake effect. Moreover, we investigated the impact of such a concurrent task on post-conflict control (i.e., the congruency sequence effect). The results show that a concurrent task reduces the head-fake effect, while post-conflict control was unaffected. We discuss these findings with regard to the relationship of working memory processes and selective attention.