An examination of motor and perceptual contributions to the recognition of deception from others’ actions Rouwen Cañal-Bruland a, * , John van der Kamp a,b , Joep van Kesteren a a Research Institute MOVE, Faculty of Human Movement Sciences, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands b Institute of Human Performance, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China article info Article history: Available online 4 November 2009 PsycINFO classification: 2300 2323 2330 3720 Keywords: Deception Recognition Expertise Viewing perspective abstract Most empirical studies thus far have confounded motor and per- ceptual experience when examining their contributions to the rec- ognition of deceptive and non-deceptive intentions from another person’s movements. In the present study, we manipulated view- ing perspective as an additional demarcation to examine the involvement of motor and perceptual experience in detecting deceptive intentions. Expert handball players (N = 26), expert handball goalkeepers (N = 19), and a group of novices (N = 20) were required to indicate whether a penalty-taker produced a true or a fake shot. The clips were shown from a front view (i.e., a goal- keeper’s customary viewing perspective) and a (more neutral) side view, and ended one frame before the ball would be released from the hand. Results indicated that expert players and goalkeepers outperformed novices in detecting deceptive intentions, but there were no differences between field players and goalkeepers. Recog- nition of deceptive actions was more accurate from the goal- keeper’s front view than from the side view. We conclude that neither the degree of motor experience nor the degree of percep- tual experience can, in themselves, account for explaining success- ful recognition of deceptive actions. Ó 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The ability to detect deceptive intentions from other persons’ actions is important in various daily situations. For example, being able to distinguish a pickpocket who tries to deceive his intentions from 0167-9457/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.humov.2009.10.001 * Corresponding author. Address: Research Institute MOVE, Faculty of Human Movement Sciences, VU University Amsterdam, Van der Boechorststraat 9, 1081 BT Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Tel.: +31 20 5988475. E-mail address: r.bruland@fbw.vu.nl (R. Cañal-Bruland). Human Movement Science 29 (2010) 94–102 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Human Movement Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/humov