Rouwen Cañal-Bruland *, Christoph Kreinbucher ** and Raôul R.d. Oudejans *
(*) MOVE Research Institute Amsterdam, Faculty of Human Movement Sciences, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
(**) Department of Sport Psychology, Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences, TU University, Munich, Germany
Citation
Cañal-Bruland, R., Kreinbucher, C., R.d. Oudejans, R. (2012). Motor expertise influences strike and ball judgements in baseball. International Journal of Sport Psychology, 43(2), 137-152. doi:10.7352/IJSP.2012.43.137
Abstract
There is initial evidence to suggest that next to perceptual experience motor experience might also contribute to anticipatory judgements in sports. In the current paper, we further examined this intriguing issue by testing whether motor experience influences ball and strike judgements in baseball. To this end, experienced players, umpires and novices were presented with video-clips of baseball pitches projected on a large screen and were asked to judge whether the observed pitches were strikes or balls. In two blocked conditions, participants either provided their response verbally or they indicated their repsonse motorically by actually swinging (or not swinging) the bat. Our results showed that independent of response mode experienced players were significantly more accurate than novices and also tended to outperform the umpires, indicating that motor experience seems to contribute to perceptual judgements. These differences could not be accounted for by the tendency to favor strike over ball judgements as this tendency seemed to be prevalent in all groups, particularly in the motor response condition when compared to the verbal response condition. We conclude that motor expertise may have beneficial effects on umpiring performance in baseball.
Keywords: Expertise, Action, Perception, Judgements, Umpiring