Hi, I am doing a science at school that tests what kind of distractions (sound or motion) affect free throw shots. Do you have any knowledge of studies that have been conducted showing whether sound (whistles, the shot clock, or yelling for example) is the most distracting , or if motion (arms waving, camera flashes, etc) is? Any help would be great. And thanks!

Jk,

I don't know of any studies done on this subject.... but when you are shooting free throws it takes a lot of concentration.. so I think its all about the person at the line... I have seen some Pros that couldn't shoot well in an empty stadium. :-)

Most players are used to noises and some distractions... flash bulbs could create one that would bother a shooter.

I coached a Varsity boys high school team and at the end of some practices we had free throw shooting contests... two teams and the non shooting team could do anything they wanted to create a distraction without going over the line... they did and said all kinds of things... the ones that bothered our guys the most was when they talked about their girl friends... the waving and yelling didn't bother them very much.

Found this:

Scientific Free-Throw Distraction

By JASON ZENGERLE
Published: December 11, 2005
Every basketball fan knows that the seats behind a backboard don't afford a great view of the court, but they do provide an opportunity to affect a game's outcome. By waving ThunderStix - those long, skinny balloons that make noise when smacked together - or other implements of distraction, fans sitting behind the basket can unnerve an opposing team's foul shooters and make them miss. But not, a new theory holds, unless the fans gesticulate in a particular way.

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According to Daniel Engber, a basketball fan with a master's degree in neuroscience, the standard "free-throw defenses" are too haphazard to be effective. Fans tend to wave their ThunderStix willy-nilly, creating a unified field of randomly moving objects. Because of the way the human brain perceives motion, free-throw shooters can easily ignore this sort of visual commotion. "Fans might think they're doing something by crazily waving their ThunderStix," Engber says, "but to the players it's all just a sea of visual white noise." Which is why, Engber surmises, N.B.A. teams' free-throw percentages at home and on the road are nearly identical.

The key to a successful free-throw defense, Engber argues, is to make a player perceive a "field of background motion" that tricks his brain into thinking that he himself is moving, thereby throwing off his shooting. In other words, fans should wave their ThunderStix in tandem.

Last season, Engber proposed this tactic to the Dallas Mavericks' owner, Mark Cuban, who took him up on the idea. For three games, Cuban had members of the Mavs' Hoop Troop instruct fans to wave their ThunderStix from side to side in unison. And as Engber subsequently reported in the online magazine Slate, the initial results were encouraging. In the first game, the Mavericks' opponent, the Boston Celtics, shot 60 percent from the line, about 20 percent below their season average. In the second game, the Milwaukee Bucks shot a meager 63 percent. But in the third game, the Los Angeles Lakers shot 78 percent - about the league average. Which apparently was enough to persuade Cuban to abandon the strategy.

Engber, however, remains a believer. "It's a pretty basic idea when you're studying what kind of perturbations of the visual world affect movement," he says, "that something systematic will have more of an effect than something random."

One more:

3..2..1...Choke! The effects of performance anxiety on the Duke basketball team

by Justin Marcus


It has all come down to this… The other team is up by one, the final seconds are ticking away, the Cameron Crazies are screaming, millions of more fans are watching at home, and all of a sudden, with a tenth of a second left, fate once again provides Duke with the opportunity to turn it all around. There is only one problem: fate has provided Duke with two free throws. Unfortunately for Duke and many other basketball teams, this blessing has the potential of being a curse in disguise. The free throw is without question one of the simplest shots in the game, yet time after time, players fail to sink them. Considering Duke’s legendary basketball program, missing free throws is nothing less than an embarrassment. How could a basketball player good enough to play for Duke miss such a fundamental and simple shot? The answer is simple: he chokes. But why does he choke? What psychological effects occur in the process of “choking”? And most importantly, how can it be remedied? Dr. Thomas Carr and graduate student Sian Beilock of the Michigan State University Psychology Department believe they have found the answers.

In Beilock and Carr’s article “On the Fragility of Skilled Performance: What Governs Choking Under Pressure?” (2001), choking is defined as “…performing more poorly than expected given one’s level of skill” (p. 701). This definition most certainly applies to the missing of free throws. In a game consisting of alley-oops, behind-the-back passes, and unbelievable feats of graceful acrobatics, free throws should be a walk in the park, an easy couple of points. However, psychological studies of performance pressure suggest otherwise. Beilock and Carr write that the negative effects of performance pressure can manifest itself in the form of choking, and choking can be explained by two theories: the “distraction theory” and the “explicit monitoring theory.”

Beilock and Carr’s “distraction theory” suggests that people may “choke” when performance pressure causes them to think about things other than the task at hand such as the consequences of failing or under-performing (p. 701). When this happens, the brain is working on two or more jobs at the same time, so it cannot fully focus on the desired subject. This type of choking, according to Beilock and Carr, is more likely to appear in cases involving memory recollection such as test taking, but it may still appear in physical skills such as free throw shooting.

Beilock and Carr’s second theory behind choking is known as “explicit monitoring theory,” and it is much more likely to affect the shooting of free throws and other physical skills (p. 701). This theory suggests that anxiety or self-consciousness about performing a certain task may cause individuals to over-focus on the task at hand. That is, they devote too much thought to each step involved in an otherwise fluid procedure. For example, when a basketball player is shooting a crucial free throw, he may devote too much attention to the position of his hands, the weight of the ball, the bend of his knees, or a variety of other factors. Because of this excess attention to the details of each step, transitions between the steps lose fluidity, and the procedure as a whole falls apart resulting in bricks, air balls, and other sad displays of tainted concentration.

Unfortunately, hours upon hours of shooting practice will not remedy this problem, according to Beilock and Carr. Even if players master the skill of free throw shooting, their anxiety in a big game can still interrupt their procedural method of shooting, causing more room for error. The only way to reduce choking is to minimize the performance pressure behind it, and the only way to minimize performance pressure is to experience it over, and over, and over again. The best way to remedy the problem is situational experience. On the other hand, it may be argued that the extensive experience in the spotlight of Duke basketball players should make them phenomenal free throw shooters. However, Duke players, as well as players from other highly ranked teams, are thrown into the spotlight in their very first games. It is possible that some players, perhaps most, would better benefit from being more slowly exposed to the public eye.

Just about everyone in the world is susceptible to choking. From leaders of nations to the almighty Duke basketball team, choking has proven to be a tough obstacle to overcome. It interrupts thought, destroys procedure, and more often than not, it leads to failure (p. 701). However, like all obstacles, choking may be triumphed over by one thing: persistence. The victors of battles tend to share the same qualities: positive attitude, faith in victory, and the will to win. Choking has a much smaller chance of affecting a person with these qualities. Winston Churchill said it best, “Never, never, never give up.”