Expert baseball batters have greater sensitivity in making swing decisions.

摘要

How does a baseball batter decide quickly enough whether a pitch will cross the plate in the strike zone to initiate a swing at a 95-mph (42-m/s) fastball that travels the distance between the pitcher's hand and the plate in only 420 ms? It is unlikely the batter could use visual information to accurately predict the height at which the pitch will cross the plate before deciding whether to initiate a swing, because the primary source of information (the angular drop rate) does not vary significantly as a function of crossing height for the first part of the ball's flight (Bahill & Karnavas, 1993; Watts & Bahill, 1991; also see Figure 1). It is more likely the batter uses visual information about the ball's crossing height to adjust the movement parameters for the final phase of the swing (Gray, 2002a; Gray, 2009).