Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Theory of Mind (ToM) refers to the ability of individuals to understand beliefs, desires, and emotions of others. Ourstudy is based on the expert-novice paradigm and aims to investigate the operations of ToM of table tennis novices andexperts by the patterns of eye movement. Stimuli integrated cognitive and affective ToM dimensions analogical to thetable tennis situations and recorded response by eye-tracking technique. Reaction time, accuracy and eye movement datawere analysis indexes. Study results revealed that experts could predict the shot actions and emotional states of opponentsmore quickly and accurately than novices, also there were differences in eye trajectory traces. The findings clearly showthat eye-tracking technique can be used to illustrate table tennis expert-novice differences in ToM and provide suggestionsfor the development of table tennis training programs in use of eye tracker facilities.