Visual Search Strategies and Decision Making in Baseball Batting

Abstract

The goal was to examine the differences in visual search strategies between expert and nonexpert baseball batters during the preparatory phase of a pitcher's pitching and accuracy and timing of swing judgments during the ball's trajectory. 14 members of a college team (Expert group), and graduate and college students (Nonexpert group), were asked to observe 10 pitches thrown by a pitcher and respond by pushing a button attached to a bat when they thought the bat should be swung to meet the ball (swing judgment). Their eye movements, accuracy, and the timing of the swing judgment were measured. The Expert group shifted their point of observation from the proximal part of the body such as the head, chest, or trunk of the pitcher to the pitching arm and the release point before the pitcher released a ball, while the gaze point of the Nonexpert group visually focused on the head and the face. The accuracy in swing judgments of the Expert group was significantly higher, and the timing of their swing judgments was significantly earlier. Expert baseball batters used visual search strategies to gaze at specific cues (the pitching arm of the pitcher) and were more accurate and relatively quicker at decision making than Nonexpert batters.

Utilizing Virtual Reality to Understand Athletic Performance and Underlying Sensorimotor Processing

“…Thus, this cognitive judgement regarding the pitcher's motion would be made in an unconscious manner and contribute to any adjustment of the swing timing. Many studies have suggested the importance to batting information about the pitcher's motion [6,7]. Our result directly supports this suggestion using virtual space.…”

You Can’t Think and Hit at the Same Time: Neural Correlates of Baseball Pitch Classification

“…In particular, Takeuchi and Inomata (2009) and Kato and Fukuda (2002) used behavioral responses and eye-tracking to monitor subject performance in judging balls and strikes between experts and novices. While the task is slightly different than ours (i.e., balls and strikes vs. fastballs, curveballs, and sliders), and our paradigm did not test experts vs. novices, the fundamental concept of a forced-choice decision based on trajectory remains the same.…”

“…For instance, eye movements before and during pitches have been extensively studied (Shank and Haywood, 1987; Kato and Fukuda, 2002; Takeuchi and Inomata, 2009) and have been used to identify optimal visual search strategies employed by expert vs. novice players. These findings show that experts focused their visual (spatial) attention closer to the estimated release point of the pitch, when compared to novices, suggesting that early-trajectory tracking can be crucial for batting performance.…”

Decision making in beach volleyball defense: Crucial factors derived from interviews with top-level experts

“…Experts' superior ability to effectively pick up early information from the opponent's movement pattern has been shown for several sports, such as badminton (Abernethy & Russell, 1987;Hagemann, Strauss, & Cañal-Bruland, 2006), tennis (Farrow, Abernethy, & Jackson, 2005;Goulet et al, 1989;Rowe & McKenna, 2001;Shim, Carlton, Chow, & Chae, 2005;Williams et al, 2002), soccer (Williams, Davids, Burwitz, & Williams, 1994), squash (Abernethy et al, 2001), cricket (Müller, Abernethy, & Farrow, 2006;Müller et al, 2009), indoor volleyball (David et al, 1990), and baseball (Takeuchi & Inomata, 2009). Furthermore, it could be shown that experts are better able to effectively interpret relative motion features of animated point-light figures (Ward, Williams, & Bennett, 2002) and to identify patterns of play based on recall and recognition processes (e.g., Williams, Hodges, North, & Barton, 2006).…”