Contributions of perceptual and motor experience of an observed action to anticipating its result.

Abstract

To gain deeper insight into respective contributions of perceptual and motor experience of an observed action to anticipating its result, we examined the perceptual anticipation of players with different action roles in striking sports. Baseball pitchers and batters at both advanced and intermediate levels were asked to make a decision about whether to swing the bat when viewing a series of videos showing incomplete sequences of a model pitcher throwing a strike or a ball. The results revealed that first 100 ms of ball flight could discriminate advanced batters from intermediate pitchers and batters (with no difference between intermediate pitchers and batters). Particularly, advanced batters (perceptual experts with regard to pitching action) were statistically more accurate and less uncertain in making decisions than were intermediate players, whereas advanced pitchers (motor experts) only showed this tendency without reaching a statistically significant level. Moreover, advanced batters demonstrated greater perceptual sensitivity in discriminating when to swing at strikes over balls than all other players. Our findings suggested that when players were above intermediate level, perceptual experience of an observed action facilitated the perceptual anticipation to a greater extent than motor experience of producing it. (PsycINFO Database Record

Nonlinear engagement of action observation network underlying action anticipation in players with different levels of expertise

“…For example, skilled baseball batters showed higher percentages of appropriate swings than novices when they were asked to respond to a pitch that was interrupted before the ball crossed the home plate (Ranganathan & Carlton, 2007). Similarly, previous work from our laboratory found that even in the case of perceptually judging whether to swing or not (without performing a swinging action) in response to a video showing incomplete pitching sequences and ball trajectories, skilled batters could more sensitively discriminate when to swing at strikes over balls than intermediate batters (Chen, Lee, Lu, Huang, & Yen, 2017). These findings suggest that skilled batters can extract and utilize crucial information from the actions of the pitcher along with the early ball flight trajectory to determine swing decisions, whereas less skilled batters have to wait until they can visualize the entire pitching sequence with longer ball trajectories.…”

“…This decision was also possibly made to avoid being called out on strikes, especially because pitches in this study were ambiguous for only incomplete pitching action and pitch trajectory was shown. For uncertain rates, we found that SBs had a lower rate than the other two groups, but the differences were not statistically significant, even using similar pitching videos for experimental stimuli as in our previous study (Chen et al, 2017). This could possibly be because, in this study, batters of three skill levels were compared and only very short videos 4.2 | AON is involved in anticipating one's own response to an observed action At the neural level, we found a clear spatial overlap of activation patterns within the AON among the three groups, replicating previous findings (Abreu et al, 2017;Bishop & Wright, 2018;Karlinsky et al, 2017; for a review, see Smith, 2016).…”

“…The perceptual sensitivity in discriminating when to swing at strikes over balls also showed this trend. These results collectively reflect that perceptual anticipation ability increases as a function of expertise level (Chen et al, 2017;Paull & Glencross, 1997;Ranganathan & Carlton, 2007), and are in close agreement with previous findings of studies on many other sports (for reviews, see Davids et al, 2005;Muller & T A B L E 1 Brain regions that were consistently or differentially engaged during action anticipation in skilled batters (SB), intermediate batters (IB), and novices (N); and brain regions that responded differently to correct and incorrect decisions Note: Significant clusters were determined using the voxel-wise height threshold of p < .001 uncorrected with multiple comparison correction at p < .01 using a Monte Carlo-determined cluster extent. Abbreviations: B, Bilateral hemispheres; BA, Brodmann area; dPMC, dorsal premotor cortex; FFG, fusiform gyrus; IFG, inferior frontal gyrus; IOG, inferior occipital gyrus; IPS, intraparietal sulcus; ITG, inferior temporal gyrus; L, left hemisphere; MFG, middle frontal gyrus; MNI, Montreal Neurological Institute; mSFG, medial superior frontal gyrus; pMOG, posterior middle occipital gyrus; pMTG, posterior middle temporal gyrus; pSTS, posterior superior temporal sulcus; R, right hemisphere; SMA, supplementary motor area; SPL, superior parietal lobule.…”

“…We expected to replicate previous behavioral findings that players with higher levels of expertise showing higher accuracy, shorter response times, and higher sensitivity in discriminating when to swing at strikes over balls (Chen et al, 2017;Paull & Glencross, 1997;Ranganathan & Carlton, 2007). The three-group study design allowed us to test whether the evoked neural underpinnings within the AON would exhibit a nonlinear pattern as a function of expertise level, as reflected by their familiarity with pitching action.…”

Is visual–perceptual or motor expertise critical for expert anticipation in sport?

“…There is only one “mismatched” study to our knowledge that investigated the contribution of visual and motor expertise to anticipation in sport. Chen et al () investigated whether advanced and intermediate baseball batters with visuomotor response expertise and pitchers with motor expertise could anticipate whether to swing or not swing at pitches (an open skill) in a video temporal occlusion paradigm. First, they found that advanced batters were significantly superior to intermediate pitchers and batters at anticipating strikes based upon an early ball flight occlusion.…”