Grasping in One-Handed Catching in Relation to Performance

Abstract

Catching a flying ball involves bringing the hand to the aimed interception point at the right time, adjusting the hand posture to receive the incoming ball and to absorb the ball momentum, and closing the hand to ensure a stable grip. A small error in any of these actions can lead to a failure in catching the ball. Here we sought to gather new insights on what aspects of the catching movements affect the interceptive performance most. In particular, we wondered whether the errors occurred in bringing the hand to the interception point or in closing the fingers on the ball, and whether these two phases of interception differed between individuals. To this end, we characterized grasping and wrist movement kinematics of eleven participants attempting to catch a ball projected in space with different ball arrival heights and flight durations. The spatial position of the ball and of several markers placed on the participant’s arm were recorded by a motion capture system, the hand joint angles were recorded with an instrumented glove, and several movement features were extracted. All participants were able to intercept the ball trajectory (i.e. to touch the ball) in over 90% of cases, but they differed in the ability to grasp the ball (success rate varied between 2% and 85%). Similar temporal features were observed across individuals when they caught the ball. In particular, all participants adapted their wrist movements under varying temporal and arrival height constraints, they aligned the time of peak hand closing velocity to the time of hand-ball contact, and they maintained the same hand closing duration in the different experimental conditions. These movement features characterized successful trials, and hence allowed to evaluate the possible sources of errors underlying unsuccessful trials. Thus, inter-individual and inter-trial variability in the modulation of each kinematic feature were related to catching performance. We observed that different participants used different solutions to bring the hand to the interception point. In particular the value of the wrist velocity at impact distinguished good from poor catchers. However, each individual showed similar wrist kinematics in grasped and touched trials. We also found that specific grasping features predicted the catching outcome, both on a trial-by-trial basis and across individuals of different performance level. A higher speed of hand closing distinguished touched from grasped trials. A proper triggering of the enclosing phase of the grasping movement and an accurate alignment of the peak of the hand closing speed to the impact event predicted the catching performance of different participants. These results indicate that the control of the grasping movement was the main source of errors affecting catching performance in our experiments. Moreover, these results suggest that distinct temporal and spatial features in the coordination of the grasping movement are related to individual catching abilities.

Factors Associated with Impaired Motor Skills in Strabismic and Anisometropic Children

“…44 Catching is an interceptive task that requires sophisticated spatiotemporal coordination of the arm and hand motion with target motion to reach the interception point at an appropriate time and configuration for grasping, and then tightening the hand's grip. 45 Control of the grasping movement may be the most important indicator of catching performance, 46 with poorer catching in stereodeficient individuals being due to less hand closure and lower peak closing hand velocity when grasping a ball. 14 In our study, children with reduced or nil stereoacuity and peripheral or no fusion scored lower than controls on the Aiming and Catching subscale, further supporting the importance of binocularity in ball skills.…”

Where Are You Throwing the Ball? I Better Watch Your Body, Not Just Your Arm!

“…Precise predictions can be made based on the ball flight after ball release. These are used for compensating sensorimotor delays in interceptive tasks ( Davidson and Wolpert, 2005 ; Zago et al, 2008 ) as well as for the fine-tuning of grasping control in catching ( Cesqui et al, 2016 ). However, depending on temporal and/or visibility constraints, information from the ball flight alone does not always allow formulating predictions with sufficient anticipation so as to successfully intercept the ball trajectory.…”

Intercepting virtual balls approaching under different gravity conditions: evidence for spatial prediction

“…In one-handed catching tasks with real balls, the success rate, evaluated as the number of caught balls over the total number of launches, has been shown to increase with flight duration (Cesqui et al 2012(Cesqui et al , 2016Mazyn et al 2006;Tijtgat et al 2010). In our experiment, in which participants were required to intercept a virtual ball with a racket, in the 1g condition no significant relation between the interceptive performance and the ball flight duration was observed.…”

“…In our experiment, in which participants were required to intercept a virtual ball with a racket, in the 1g condition no significant relation between the interceptive performance and the ball flight duration was observed. This discrepancy may be due to the fact that what affected the performance most when participants were catching real balls was the timing of the closing of the fingers on the ball (Cesqui et al 2016), an action not required in the present interception task. However, the success rate remains lower for virtual balls even if we consider the number of real balls caught or only touched.…”

“…. Because of the stringent spatiotemporal constraints, a small error in the position and/or in the timing of the endeffector leads to a failure in intercepting a moving object (Alderson et al 1974;Cesqui et al 2015Cesqui et al , 2016. To generate an accurate motor plan, the CNS must rely on visual information acquired during target motion.…”