Do people stick to one way of giving directions across tasks?
Frisbee players showed no consistent personal preference for 'left/right' versus 'home/away' style directions across a navigation task and a sports task; the task, not the person, shaped which was easier.
Source
Reference frames in spatial communication for navigation and sports: an empirical study in ultimate frisbee players
Study at a glance
- Design
- Human experiment — Online within-subject reaction-time task (order counterbalanced): road-intersection and ultimate-frisbee versions, each crossing prompt type (absolute vs relative) with stick-figure position (near vs far); pre-registered cross-task correlation.
- N
- N=58 · 76 ultimate frisbee players responded; 58 verified participants with complete data were analysed.
- Population
- Ultimate frisbee players from the Philadelphia area, mean age about 27, mostly experienced players.
- Outcome
- Reaction-time difference between relative and absolute prompts in each task (reference frame preference) and its cross-task correlation; accuracy.
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What they did
Experienced ultimate frisbee players completed two versions of a speeded task online. In one, a stick figure stood at a road intersection and a prompt such as 'Go Home' or 'Go Left' asked which way it should go; in the other, the same logic applied to calling a defensive 'force' on a frisbee field (home/away versus forehand/backhand). The stick figure faced either away from or toward the participant, so relative and absolute answers could not be predicted from each other. The pre-registered test was whether each person's speed advantage for one reference frame correlated across the two tasks.
What they found
There was no correlation between individuals' reference frame preferences in the two tasks, and a Bayes factor of 5.87 favoured the null. Preferences also did not relate to self-rated sense of direction or years of play. Instead, the tasks differed systematically: players were faster with relative prompts in the frisbee task but slightly faster with absolute prompts in the road task, which also showed much more individual variability. A subgroup, dubbed 'Flippers', consistently answered far-side absolute road trials from the stick figure's viewpoint rather than their own.
The limits
What it doesn't show
The sample was a specialised group of frisbee players tested on a computer screen, so the 'large-scale' tasks may really have tapped small-scale spatial processing, as the authors acknowledge. Many exploratory findings (the Flippers, stated-preference effects) were not pre-registered and the authors decline to interpret some. Stated preference counts are reported inconsistently between the Results and Discussion. Real navigation or live play, with realistic scenes, might change which frames people use.
Key terms
- Reference frame
- The spatial system used to specify a direction or location, such as relative to one's body, to the environment, or to an object.
- Relative reference frame
- Directions defined by the viewer's or actor's facing direction, like left and right or forehand and backhand.
- Absolute reference frame
- Directions anchored to stable features of the environment, like north or the 'home' sideline, that do not change when you turn.
- Pre-registration
- Publicly recording hypotheses and analyses before collecting data, which separates confirmatory from exploratory findings.
- Bayes factor (BF01)
- A ratio expressing how much more likely the data are under the null hypothesis than under the alternative.
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Quiz yourself
What did the pre-registered cross-task correlation show?
Common questions
Why use ultimate frisbee at all?
It is one of the few everyday activities outside navigation where people routinely use both absolute (home/away) and relative (forehand/backhand) terms for the same direction.
Does a null correlation prove people have no reference frame preference?
No. It suggests any preference is not stable across these two tasks; people may still have preferences within a task, and the frisbee task showed a consistent relative advantage.
Who were the 'Flippers'?
Participants who systematically answered far-side absolute road trials as if from the stick figure's perspective, suggesting they adopted another person's viewpoint.
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