Seeing or doing? Pitch recognition of batters versus pitchers: A preliminary report

Abstract

In this study we tackled the question: between the experience of seeing or doing the movement, which one is more important in understanding the observed movement? We thus asked batters and pitchers, in high and intermediate skill levels, to identify the type of pitch that was edited in difference lengths. In general, we found that advanced players showed significant higher accuracy and lower uncertain rate than the intermediate players, particularly in viewing short pitch sequences. These results reflected the requirement of fast sports such as baseball, in which players have to make a correct decision quickly rather than staying uncertain. Moreover, advanced batters showed the tendency of being more accurate than advanced pitchers, though the difference did not reach statistical significance possibly due to small sample size. In consistency with the previous studies, all players showed higher accuracy in identifying the strike pitches when they could see longer sequence of the pitch motion and the baseball trajectory (Paull & Glencross, 1997). In sum, our results supported the notion that when understanding an observed movement, the perceptuo-motor experience reacting to it is more important than the actual motor experience of the observed movement.