Visuomotor Predictors of Batting Performance in Baseball Players

Journal of Vision (2021) 21(3):3, 1–16 1 Visuomotor predictors of batting performance in baseball players Department of Psychology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR Division of Science & Technology, Beijing Normal University–Hong Kong Baptist University United Rongrong Chen International College, Zhuhai, PRC Human Systems Integrations Division, NASA Ames Leland S. Stone Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA Department of Psychology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR Faculty of Arts and Science, New York University Shanghai, Shanghai, PRC NYU-ECNU Institute of Brain and Cognitive Science at Li Li New York University Shanghai, Shanghai, PRC Hitting a baseball, one of the most difficult skills in all of at nearly 100 mph, often along a curved trajectory. This sports, requires complex hand-eye coordination, but its amazing feat leads to the question of what elemental link with basic visuomotor capabilities remains largely skills are critical to hit a pitch successfully. It has unknown. Here we examined basic visuomotor skills of been proposed that these elemental skills include (a) baseball players and demographically matched encoding visual motion signal to form the percept of nonathletes by measuring their ocular-tracking and pitch trajectory, (b) making a decision about whether manual-control performance. We further investigated to swing, and (c) coordinating multiple motor systems how these two capabilities relate to batting to drive and adjust the swing (Adair, 1990; Bahill & performance in baseball players. Compared to LaRitz, 1984; Williams & Underwood, 1970). Because nonathletes, baseball players showed better these skills are largely visuomotor, the questions arise: ocular-tracking and manual-control capabilities, which Do baseball players have better basic visuomotor remain unchanged with increasing baseball experience. capabilities, compared to nonathletes, and how are Both, however, become more correlated with batting accuracy with increasing experience. Ocular-tracking these capabilities related to their batting performance? performance is predictive of batting skill, accounting for Previous behavioral studies on baseball players have ≥ 70% of the variance in batting performance across studied their low-level visual function (e.g., acuity, players with ≥ 10 years of experience. A simple linear stereoacuity, and contrast sensitivity; Laby et al., additive-noise cascade model with shared front-end 1996; Molia, Rubin, & Kohn, 1998; Uchida, Kudoh, visual noise that limits batting performance can explain Murakami, Honda, & Kitazawa, 2012), the type of many of our results. Our findings show that fundamental visual or perceptual information needed to successfully visuomotor capabilities can predict the complex, learned hit (Bahill & LaRitz, 1984; Gray, 2002a; Higuchi, skill of baseball batting. Morohoshi, Nagami, Nakata, & Kanosue, 2013; Ranganathan & Carlton, 2007)orcatchaball(Fink, Foo, & Warren, 2009; McBeath, Shaffer, & Kaiser, 1995; McLeod & Dienes, 1996; Shaffer & McBeath, 2002), Introduction their cognitive processing (Gray, 2002b), and their eye movements outside the context of batting (Fooken Hitting a baseball is considered “one of the most & Spering, 2019; Fooken, Yeo, Pai, & Spering, 2016). difficult skills in sports”DeRenne, ( 2007). This is Previous studies, however, have not comprehensively because baseball players have less than 500 ms to plan characterized the full range of basic visuomotor and execute their swing to hit a pitch coming at them capabilities of baseball players and, more important, Citation: Chen, R., Stone, L. S., & Li, L. (2021). Visuomotor predictors of batting performance in baseball players. Journal of Vision, 21(3):3, 1–16, https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.21.3.3. https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.21.3.3 Received August 28, 2020; published March 2, 2021 ISSN 1534-7362 Copyright 2021 The Authors Downloaded from jov.arvojournals.orgThis work ison licensed 09/30/2021 under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Journal of Vision (2021) 21(3):3, 1–16 Chen, Stone, & Li 2 have not examined how these capabilities could be the Women’s Baseball World Cup. Many also played related to batting performance. To fill this research softball before starting playing baseball and joining the gap, in the current study, we used two methods that National Team. Based on their field positions in major we previously developed to measure ocular-tracking baseball contests, there were 16 infielders (9 males, 7 and manual-control performance to assess baseball females), 12 outfielders (3 males, 9 females), 12 pitchers players on the Hong Kong National Baseball Team (3 males, 9 females), and 4 catchers (2 males, 2 females) and demographically matched nonathletes. In the in our baseball player participant group. According to ocular-tracking task, participants were asked to the World Baseball Softball Confederation, the Hong follow an unpredictably moving target with their eyes Kong men’s national baseball team was ranked 30th out (Krukowski & Stone, 2005; Liston & Stone, 2014). of 85 nations and the Hong Kong women’s team was This task is designed to assess dynamic aspects of ranked 10th out of 20 nations in 2019. vision, smooth pursuit tracking, and the coordination Forty-seven demographically matched healthy of pursuit with saccades. In the manual-control task, nonathletes (20 males, 27 females) in the age range of participants were asked to use a joystick to control a 18 to 39 years (mean ± SD:24± 6 years) participated randomly moving target (Li, Sweet, & Stone, 2005). in the experiment as the control group. All were staff or This task mimics the visuomotor control component of students at the University of Hong Kong and reported lane keeping (see Li, Chen, & Chen, 2016) and allows having no previous competitive ball-sports experience. us to evaluate many aspects of closed-loop visuomotor All participants were right-handed and had normal control such as overall performance error, response or corrected-to-normal vision. No participant wore gain, and response delay. corrective lenses, and only two nonathlete participants We expected that, due to the highly elite nature of wore glasses. All participants were naive to the baseball players selected by the team, they would show purpose of the study and provided informed consent in better ocular-tracking and manual-control capabilities accordance with guidelines from the Human Research compared with nonathletes. However, basic visuomotor Ethics Committee of the University of Hong Kong. tasks likely reach asymptotic performance by early All 44 baseball players completed the ocular-tracking adulthood with just everyday experience, whereas task. One female player (pitcher) did not participate in baseball batting requires years of specialized training the manual-control task, leaving 43 baseball players and practice before reaching its peak. We therefore who completed the manual-control task. All 47 expected that ocular-tracking and manual-control nonathletes completed the manual-control task. Three performance would not change with experience in female and two male nonathletes could not generate playing baseball, but batting performance would. valid data for the ocular-tracking task, leaving 42 Furthermore, if basic visuomotor capabilities (such as nonathletes who completed the ocular-tracking task. ocular tracking and manual control) and sophisticated, The ocular-tracking and manual-control tasks were learned visuomotor skills (such as baseball batting) tested on the same day, and the testing order was share fixed and rate-limiting noise in visual motion counterbalanced across participants. Among the 44 processing, we anticipated that either ocular-tracking baseball players, 23 female players in the age range of or manual-control performance would predict batting 18 to 41 years (mean ± SD:28± 8 years) with baseball performance and that their power of prediction could experience in the range of 3 to 18 years (mean ± SD: change with baseball experience. The primary goal of 9 ± 4 years) volunteered to participate in the batting this study was to determine effective basic visuomotor performance test on a different day. predictors of batting performance in baseball players. The sample size of this study was chosen intuitively based on our extensive experience in research on visuomotor control and was at the upper end of the range of participants commonly run in such Methods experiments. Participants Forty-four baseball players on the Hong Kong Ocular-tracking task Baseball National Team (17 males, 27 females) in theagerangeof18to45years(mean± SD:27± 8 Stimuli and apparatus years) with baseball experience in the range of 3 to The ocular-tracking task has been described 30 years (mean ± SD:11± 6 years) participated in previously (Liston & Stone, 2014; Stone, Tyson, this study. Although none of them were professional Cravalho, Feick, & Flynn-Evans, 2019). It was based baseball players, all had competition experience in on the classic Rashbass (1961) step-ramp paradigm major international baseball contests such as the Hong modified to accommodate a full sampling of the polar Kong Baseball Open, the Phoenix Cup Hong Kong angles using 180 trials with each trial along every even International Women’s Baseball Tournament, and/or angle around the clock. On each trial, a red dot target Downloaded from jov.arvojournals.org on 09/30/2021 Journal of Vision (2021) 21(3):3, 1–16 Chen, Stone, & Li 3 validation procedure would be repeated

Load more